Since its launch in 2013, DoorDash has gained prominence in the food delivery service. It’s not like there were no other food delivery services before DoorDash, Uber Eats, and Grubhub had already been working in the market. At the same time, DoorDash came and knocked it out of the park in the market.
By the way, DoorDash continues to evolve, having first started as a food delivery service. And now it’s a logistics and technology platform that offers delivery, pickup, and digital storefronts.
Besides that, the brand provides advertising and financial services to its consumers, drivers, and businesses. It’s all down to its DoorDash branding strategy, thoughtfully serving its consumers with the changing times.
Apart from physical restaurant and retail stores, DoorDash also supports virtual brands with no physical storefront, such as Pasqually’s Pizza & Wings (from Chuck E. Cheese), Neighbourhood Wings (from Applebee’s), and It’s Just Wings (from Chili’s).
DoorDash’s well-defined branding strategy bridges the gap that its competitors lack and consumers love to fill. It’s crucial to understand how DoorDash’s branding surpassed the competition and achieved a valuation of $104.42 billion in a remarkably short period. Let’s roll into essential aspects of the DoorDash brand.
1. Targeted Market Selection
One of the DoorDash branding strategies that made the company successful is its target audience segmentation and market. This helps them position their brand deliberately to its potential segment of consumers. So, DoorDash has made three segments of its audience.
- Consumers: First, there are the busy people and foodie who want good food at their doorstep while prioritizing their comfort.
- Restaurants: Second on the list are the restaurants that lack resources to deliver or are less popular dining spots.
- Dasher: These are delivery vehicle drivers who want fast and flexible work, own a personal vehicle, and have a smartphone.
DoorDash acknowledges that these defined group segments have different needs and preferences. As a result, they develop a branding strategy centred on meeting every user’s needs.
Other than targeting a specific audience segment, the brand also focuses on a particular market location. When DoorDash entered the market, food delivery services were already abundant in urban cities. But in certain rural areas, suburbs, and smaller urban hubs, people have far fewer food delivery options. So they targeted these regions initially to stand out, which later helped them grow to over 7,000 cities across the U.S., Australia, Canada, Japan, and Germany.
2. Establish a clear mission, vision, and define its brand values.
It’s super important for brands to clarify their mission, and DoorDash knows it well. The brand clearly defines its mission.
“Our mission is to grow and empower local economies.”
This means that DoorDash helps people reach their full potential by providing opportunities to grow with its platform.
It serves as a guide in brand decisions, attracts consumers, and motivates its employees. Meanwhile, DoorDash exists to deliver goods by connecting people and possibilities.
They intentionally set their brand vision to advance the brand and serve their community.
“DoorDash’s vision is to build a last-mile logistics platform that ties consumers with local businesses, while also providing a set of services to increase merchant sales and offer a membership program for consumers.”
Along with that, DoorDash’s strong brand values drive loyal customers and business growth while attracting the right talent. These are the guiding beliefs of DoorDash that underpin its mission and operational approach. Here, you can see the solid DoorDash brand values.
- Consumer-obsessed, not competitor-focused
- Bias for action
- Make room at the table
- Think outside the room
- One team, one fight
- Innovation
- Be an owner
- Dream big, start small
- Choose optimism & have a plan
- Truth seek
- 1% better every day
- Inclusive Culture
These values align with its brand mission and vision. In other words, DoorDash’s brand essence is to help people grow, a commitment to being better, and a way to see people meet their goals.
3. Purpose-Driven Visual Identity
Logo
Did you know that 91% of American internet users recognize the DoorDash logo? It’s pretty remarkable for company’s brand awareness efforts. Also, the brand logo mirrors its brand values and mission.
The DoorDash logo features a D icon alongside the wordmark. While the stylized bright red “D” emblem also resembles a wing, it illustrates the speedy food delivery as it triggers the feeling of motion and efficiency.
The font used in the wordmark of DoorDash is the sans-serif typeface TT Norms Pro with all uppercase letters. It elevates the modern aesthetic and readability while representing the brand essence: speed, efficiency, and reliability. After all, wordmark brings clarity and precision to the overall feel of the logo.
Color
DoorDash primary branding colors are bold and vibrant red, white, and Gray. After all, red evokes excitement, urgency, and a stimulated appetite.
The brand, in contrast with red, uses white and cool gray, which communicates a feeling of optimism and simplicity. Overall, the color palette resonates with the doors-dash brand identity to provide a seamless, speedy, and straightforward user experience.
Aside from these, DoorDash also uses secondary colors to complement the core colors, such as navy blue, vibrant yellow, melon pastel, and teal, to create refreshing designs.
In addition to striking visuals, DoorDash uses original photography, illustrations, and iconography strategically that support its mission to connect people and possibilities.
Also, DoorDash created brand guidelines to stay consistent with its visuals to raise brand recognition.
4. Convenient and Empowering Brand Messaging
DoorDash’s brand voice is bold and optimistic, inspiring and empowering its audience. At the start, DoorDash branding messaging was solely mainstreamed on convenience.
DoorDash branding taglines like “Delivering Good” and “Delightful Delivery” pass on the message that the platform is not just about delivering food. But about delivering positive experiences, opportunities, and connections for everyone involved.
Most importantly, DoorDash’s strategy is to tailor its message to current world events. During challenging times like the COVID-19 pandemic, DoorDash swiftly positioned itself as an essential service.
For instance, DoorDash rolled out “Open for Delivery” initiatives to inform consumers that restaurants are open, to help them survive.
For consumers they took health and safety seriously, and the brand offered no-contact delivery through the “Leave it at my door” option as the default drop-off method.
And for the dasher, the brand motivates them to work and sustain communities.
This positions the brand as a goodwill, vital partner, not just a random delivery app.
5. Strategic Partnerships with other brands
To continually improve its service, DoorDash seeks strategic partnerships with brands that cater to its target groups.
DoorDash built a scalable AI-powered system to personalize the experience for consumers, restaurants, and dashers while improving delivery logistics. It provides useful data-driven tools where they can manage orders, customize the menu, advertise their services, and directly communicate with customers.
In other words, virtual brands continue to innovate and advance technology to help local economies thrive.
In addition to that, DoorDash partners with other companies to make the platform better for everyone. For instance, the brand partners with rewards platform Ibotta to allow CPG (Consumer Packaged Goods) brands to they can customize promotions and coupons.
To make the advertising process smooth, DoorDash partners with The Trade Desk. This partnership empowers advertisers to reach the right audience and deliver relevant, clear, and measurable campaigns.
Beyond restaurants, DoorDash has taken a step by partnering with retailers like Sephora, Victoria’s Secret, and Party City.
This partnership allows the brand to offer a wider range of products beyond food to consumers.
In recent times, DoorDash also tied the knot with Coco Robotics (a top food delivery robotics company) to deliver sidewalk robot delivery for customers in Los Angeles and Chicago.
Takeway
DoorDash brand started in the competitive food delivery market and beat the odds with a well-crafted brand strategy. It’s a combination of thoughtful visuals, a focus on neglected markets, empowering local economies, and strategic partnerships.
Well, it’s all about DoorDash finding its differentiator and unique value proposition to beat the competition. DoorDash identified the market gap and connected the dots to serve its target consumers. In addition to that, the DoorDash branding strategy is to continue innovating to improve the customer experience on the platform.
Discussion about this post