All the Ads, All the Chaos: Learn how one app outsmarted 76 brands with one brilliant code in 2024!

From the desk of Miles Everson:

Happy Thursday!

Welcome to “Gorillas of Guerrilla Marketing!”

All the Ads, All the Chaos: Learn how one app outsmarted 76 brands with one brilliant code in 2024!

Picture this: You’re on your couch, beer in hand, crowded with friends. Between the kicks and touchdowns, your phone buzzes.

A brand you knew only for delivery is suddenly promising everything.

Not just the pizza and groceries, but every product that airs during Super Bowl ads.

… and yes, you might win it all.

Setting the Stage: Why the Campaign Was Born

DoorDash wasn’t content being known simply as a food delivery service. It wanted to transcend that identity and stake a claim as a full-blown commerce platform—one that could deliver “anything.”

As one of the campaign’s architects put it:

“To stand out during the Super Bowl, we couldn’t just tell America that DoorDash delivers basically anything. We had to go a step further and prove it… by delivering every product advertised during the Super Bowl broadcast to one lucky winner.”

A sweepstakes alone wouldn’t cut it. What was needed was a storytelling engine that would flex in real time, evolve with the Super Bowl itself, and pull people into the orbit of DoorDash’s new brand promise.

The Strategy: Build Hype, Then Prove It

The brilliance of “All the Ads” lies in how it transformed a passive act (watching TV) into an interactive mission.

The campaign’s architecture rested on three pillars:

• A live, evolving narrative

  Two weeks before the game, the campaign launched with a teaser film and an always-on content ecosystem.

  

  As competing brands dropped their Super Bowl ad announcements, DoorDash “added” those products to a running virtual cart.

  Cars, giant tubs of mayonnaise, snack pallets—the prize pile ballooned as the game drew near!

  Throughout the buildup, DoorDash’s “Dashspondent” (a branded correspondent) and subcultural influencers kept the momentum alive, dropping hints, teasing reveals, and engaging niche communities.

• Real-time social and reactive engagement

  As the game aired, the campaign wasn’t static. Whenever a new Super Bowl ad premiered, DoorDash updated its cart live, amplifying the ridiculousness and scale of the prize.

  

  Social media became chaotic: Users compared notes, begged for clues, debated whether one person could win it. Some users even tried selling or decoding the promo code in real time.

• A promo code nobody expected

  Finally, in the fourth quarter, a 30-second DoorDash commercial dropped. It directed viewers to doordash-all-the-ads.com and challenged them to enter a promo code but with a twist!

  

  This wasn’t your average 6- or 8-digit code. It was 1,813 characters long, a rollercoaster of symbols, VFX, and visual chaos crafted by director Mike Diva.

  Solving the code required collaboration, persistence, and creativity. People formed code-breaking parties, paused the game, replayed the ad, exchanged tips on forums, and tried to outmaneuver each other in an escalating contest of wits.

  It was a promotional stunt disguised as a crowd puzzle, and the resulting noise was deafening!

Execution Highlights and Tactical Moves

• Influencer & niche targeting : Instead of relying solely on mass reach, the campaign tapped subcultures—cars, snack enthusiasts, meme communities—to seed conversation in domains naturally aligned with the prize elements.
• Live pinned feeds & real-time updates : As the cart expanded, DoorDash pinned live updates on social platforms to redirect buzz and keep attention focused on the unfolding journey.
• Adaptive storytelling : Because not all ads were publicly announced in advance, the team had to remain nimble. When surprise ads aired, they raced to add them to the cart and update their channels, seamlessly making them part of the narrative.
• Intertwined media & social design : The campaign blurred lines between TV, social media, influencer marketing, and on-site engagement, creating a unified, cross-channel experience.
• High stakes, low barrier to entry : While the code was difficult, entry was free and just as available to casual viewers as die-hard fans. No purchase was required—only curiosity and effort.
• A promo code nobody expected Influencer & niche targeting : Instead of relying solely on mass reach, the campaign tapped subcultures—cars, snack enthusiasts, meme communities—to seed conversation in domains naturally aligned with the prize elements.

RESULTS

The campaign didn’t just grab attention; it also outperformed nearly every benchmark.

Here’s how success looked in hard numbers and cultural impact:

• Earned Impressions: 11.9 billion in total
• Sweepstakes Entries: Over 8 million submissions
• Earned Social Impressions: 300 million
• Influencer Video Views: 111.7 million
• Engagement Lift on Social: +457% across social platforms
• Awards & Honors: Titanium Grand Prix at the Cannes Lions, multiple Gold/Silver/Bronze at the Cannes Lions, D&AD, The One Show, and more
• Target Surpasses: Earned impressions beat goals by 200%, earned social mentions beat targets by 150%, influencer impressions outpaced targets by 1,250%

Beyond numbers, the campaign achieved something rarer: cultural resonance .

• Reddit threads amassed thousands of comments as users debated decoding strategy.
• Some people even paused the Super Bowl to crack the code, while others tried to resell it.
• DoorDash climbed into the top 10 most-discussed brands pre-game despite lacking a celebrity or obvious “hook.”

Clearly, the campaign rewrote expectations!

In the domain of Super Bowl marketing, where billions are spent on 30-second spots, this brand turned the night inside out!

The BIG Takeaway

In the end, “All the Ads” wasn’t just a campaign; it was also a cultural event —a high-stakes game night where marketing met mischief, and consumers weren’t just spectators but co-conspirators.

Through this campaign DoorDash proved attention isn’t bought anymore but earned through curiosity, play, and daring to do something that hasn’t been done before.

What else?

What made it brilliant wasn’t just the scale but also the mindset : The willingness to flip convention on its head, to make other brands’ million-dollar commercials part of DoorDash’s own story, and to turn an audience of millions into active participants in the narrative.

It was guerrilla marketing not because it hid in the shadows, but because it ambushed expectations in broad daylight.

… and here’s the part worth remembering: The future of marketing doesn’t belong to those who shout the loudest. Rather, it belongs to those who make people lean in .

So, the next time you’re planning your own campaign, ask yourself:

One you answer that question, go ahead—break the pattern, blur the lines, and maybe, just maybe…

Deliver something no one saw coming .

Hope you’ve found this week’s guerrilla marketing insight interesting and helpful.

Stay tuned for next Thursday’s Gorillas of Guerrilla Marketing!

Do you want to know how Nike found a creative way to promote one of the NBA’s up-and-coming talents ?

See it in next week’s article!