Instacart Touches Hearts on Father’s Day

Like Mother’s Day ads, Father’s Day commercials are a golden opportunity for brands to step back from the detail of their products or services and present moments of emotional meaning. Father’s Day marketing efforts that only focus on specific deals and promotions are missing out on the chance to demonstrate a connection to the dads (and sons and daughters) in their audience.

Instacart’s Father’s Day ad is a lovely example of a brand taking that opportunity, with a touching and unusual spin on the parent-child connection that also shows off what the brand does best – get people what they need, when they need it.

The ad stars a dad who notices his daughter scrolling on Instacart looking for disposable razors, and decides to help her out, picking out a brand that he knows she can trust. The daughter is wanting to shave her legs for the first time, and dad helps show her how to use shaving gel to get the job done. It’s a cute moment that shows the bond between the pair, and its quiet intimacy is a far cry from the bombastic offers and promotions advertisers often use to promote Father’s Day.

This kind of ad works well because of its human connection – what Orlando Wood, in his blueprint for emotional advertising Look Out, calls “between-ness”. An ad which includes elements like gestures, glances and meaningful non-verbal communication between characters will create what Wood calls “showmanship” – brands giving viewers entertainment, stories and feelings in exchange for their time. Showmanship drives longer-term business and brand effects. It goes hand in hand with “salesmanship”, the art of making and closing a deal with the consumer, which drives short-term sales impact. Brands must pay attention to both.

In System1’s Test Your Ad platform, these related forces are represented by the Star Rating, predicting long-term growth potential from an ad, and the Spike Rating, predicting short-term sales effects. Instacart’s moving ad performs well on Star Rating, with a very good 3.8-Star score, high above the average for the US Supermarket category (2.6-Stars). The decision to focus on a human moment pays off in terms of longer-term potential.

But the ad also excels in short-term Spike Rating, getting an Exceptional score (again, far above the average). Again, it’s emotion doing the work here. While positive emotion leads to better long-term impressions of the brand, in the short-term its the intensity of the emotion (positive or negative) that matters. Instacart’s ad has an emotional intensity score well above the norm, which is driving up the short-term potential of the ad.

For a Father’s Day ad, designed to be shown for a shorter period of time than the average commercial, an exceptional Spike score is excellent news – it means the ad will help strongly drive sales at the same time as it reminds the dads watching how Instacart can help out in very personal moments.

This is something brands sometimes miss about Showmanship and Salesmanship – they aren’t opposites, and a successful ad will often do both, with the good feeling to build brands long-term and the intensity and strong branding to drive action when it counts.