DoorDash: Championing Women's Sports in Canada

DoorDash sought strategic avenues for growth within the highly competitive Canadian food delivery market. While competitors largely dominated male sports sponsorships, DoorDash identified a significant and underserved opportunity in women's sports, aligning with its brand values and aiming to differentiate itself. 

A key challenge was the alarming rate at which young girls quit sports before adolescence, despite basketball's growing popularity. DoorDash aimed to leverage its brand to champion diversity and gender equality, creating an environment where female athletes could thrive and inspire future generations, while simultaneously expanding its market penetration and connecting with key female audience segments. 

DoorDash evolved its existing partnership with the NBA to focus on the WNBA, particularly around the first-ever WNBA game played in Canada. Recognizing that select DoorDash priority audience segments skew female, the strategy was to engage these users for retention and growth by supporting women in sports. 

The campaign leveraged DoorDash's contractual assets, including IP rights, promotional inclusion, TVC units during broadcast, and in-venue branding. A key partnership was forged with TSN, Canada's major sports broadcaster, for WNBA-themed brandsell Sportscentre features, and a homepage takeover. DoorDash also collaborated with The Gist, a platform dedicated to empowering female sports fans, to create exclusive content, including behind-the-scenes videos, player interviews, and interactive fan experiences, fostering positive sentiment and brand awareness. 

Leading up to and during the game, DoorDash secured significant media buys across TSN, Sportsnet, and The Gist, owning game day on broadcast and digital channels. A custom Sportscentre feature highlighting "stars to watch" was created, and a promo offer was extended to fans. This multi-channel approach ensured broad reach and deep engagement, demonstrating DoorDash's commitment to empowering women and promoting diversity in sports. 

The DoorDash WNBA sponsorship campaign delivered substantial media reach, engagement, and positive brand sentiment: 

• Broadcast Impressions: DoorDash's broadcast buys, including WNBA season and NBA playoff spots, generated close to 9.5 million impressions. 

• Digital Impressions: Digital assets, including homepage takeovers on Sportsnet.ca, TSN.ca, and The Score on game day (May 13th) drove over 16.2 million impressions, representing a 171% overdelivery from the plan. 

• The Gist Partnership Impact: 

• Generated over 1.2 million impressions, building extremely positive sentiment and brand awareness. 

• Achieved an organic average engagement rate of 4.1% on social media, significantly above The Gist's benchmark of 2.5%. 

• The Gist x DoorDash giveaway post was the best-performing post of the entire engagement, with a 19.3% total organic engagement rate, far exceeding the 2.5% benchmark. 

• Audience Engagement: The custom Sportscentre feature highlighting WNBA stars saw a significant audience jump of +38% during the week of activity. 

The campaign successfully built excitement for the first WNBA game in Canada, brought greater awareness to the WNBA for Canadian audiences, and solidified DoorDash's position as a champion for women in sports.