DoorDash’s repositioning is in the bag

Aiming to shift perceptions of the brand from a conventional food delivery service into the much broader sphere of “24/7 life hack,” DoorDash’s new campaign sought to create a distinctive challenger position for itself within the Australian market. As Head of Brand Madison Westall explains, the ambition was to “shift the brand from quite a transactional service within a crowded category into a more valued and culturally relevant offering that would click with Aussies.”

DDB Sydney helped bring this vision to life, with the aptly titled “The Bags” introducing a world of anthropomorphic characters intended to convey a renewed sense of youthfulness, playfulness, and boldness. Leveraging a very dry, laid-back Australian style of humor, the playful characters elicited high levels of amusement. Coupled with an inevitable dose of annoyance (which is often a byproduct of humor), this left viewers sitting up and taking notice.

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While the brand has dabbled with humor in the past, it has typically done this in a more family-oriented way. Resultingly, the playfulness of the bags and their brash topic of conversation railed against what people have typically come to expect from the brand. And as a fundamental ingredient for long-term memory encoding, it’s a challenge that has struck down many a-brand campaign before.

But in this case, instead of the DoorDash brand becoming lost in this new and entirely unfamiliar creative direction, the true power of distinctive brand characters came to the fore. Seen hitched to bikes all around Australia, the bright red/orange bags are already uniquely attributable to DoorDash. As such, building these characters on top of this unmistakable asset provided a tried-and-trusted way of crafting powerful branded memories. Put simply, the bags worked effortlessly to anchor the entire campaign back to DoorDash and DoorDash only.

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With the all-important branding side of the equation delivered upon, the characters now provide DoorDash with ample opportunity to explore even bolder and quirkier narratives in future. But in order to truly embed the brand’s pivot to this bold, playful, and adventurous new positioning, consistency is of course key. And that of course relies upon the brand continuing to both look and feel like itself at every possible opportunity. No easy feat, but critical, nonetheless.

Departing from an established brand personality can feel to those involved like the brand is needing to start from scratch again. But as DoorDash demonstrates, there are ways to navigate this predicament. DoorDash didn’t just launch an entirely new creative platform, but more importantly it invested in a powerful branding device that can be carried forward into future campaigns. The ultimate benefit of course is creating advertising that is remembered just as much for the story it tells as for the brand behind it.

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