DoorDash Knows What You’ll Do This Summer

Move over Superman – DoorDash has a summer blockbuster of its own to share. At four minutes, “Summer Scaries” has a mighty running time for a commercial, but the delivery app and its in-house agency Superette have gone all-out for nostalgic entertainment in an attempt to appeal to Millennial parents and drive awareness of their “Summer of DashPass” suite of summer deals.

“Summer Scaries” stars actors Freddie Prinze Jr and Ali Larter, in roles riffing on their star turns in teen horror classics “I Know What You Did Last Summer” and “Final Destination.” Now Prinze Jr and Larter are older, and faced with a new, less supernatural but no less terrifying, threat. How to keep their families entertained across twelve long weeks of Summer vacation, without spending a fortune.

In an ad which balances laughs with tongue-in-cheek scares, Prinze Jr at first tries to appease his kids with unappetizing home-made tacos, but soon loses control of his children – and his wallet – as the ice cream truck lures them outside with prices scarier than any movie monster. A harassed Ali Larter drives by, offering sympathy but just as vulnerable to summer spending. Prinze is driven to board up his house, but then Larter appears again, considerably happier, with news of the “Summer Of DashPass” event from DoorDash, with deals that save the families’ summers.

The ad keeps attention across its length by a series of visual jokes and references inspired by horror tropes, like the way Prinze Jr’s kids suddenly start speaking in unison, or Larter’s mysterious disappearance. This kind of attention to detail makes the ad a lot more entertaining, and means DoorDash are harnessing the power of cultural references. As we know from Orlando Wood’s work in his Look out and Lemon books, cultural references are a way of deepening the context of your ad and drawing the attention of viewers who enjoy ‘getting it’. They appeal to the right hemisphere of the brain, which pays attention to context and relationships and is associated with longer term effects.

That helps drive DoorDash to a 3.1-Star score on Test Your Ad, very good for an ad of this epic length. But with the Summer of DashPass only lasting a few weeks, the brand will be more interested in the short-term Spike Rating score, which comes in as Exceptional, massively ahead of the average in the mobile app category. Spike predicts short-term actions like sales and downloads, and “Summer Scaries” gets an excellent score because of its skill in balancing different kinds of emotions, from fear to amused happiness.

As our Extraordinary Cost of Dull report shows, one of the primary aims of ads should be to avoid dullness. Making an ad exciting not only helps that short-term Spike Rating, it makes ads more efficient in the long run. A dull ad needs far higher spend to create the same business impact as an interesting one. “Summer Scaries” may be long, but it’s never dull, and that means this horror epic has a very happy ending for DoorDash.