On a day that is geared towards love between two people, we wanted women to buy flowers for themselves on Valentine’s Day with 11 fresh, red roses, and one The Rose vibrator. We sparked conversations around women and masturbation, specifically around self-pleasure without incurring shame, pitching and landing coverage across 100+ publications and broadcast media, and sparking conversations on social, ultimately driving people to purchase the special bouquets this past Valentine’s Day. Thus, “The Self-Love Bouquet” continued to highlight DoorDash as a progressive brand and established that they are always in tune with existing and important social conversations.

In 2023, DoorDash was already established as more than just a food delivery service, so we needed a big idea that would go one step further. We knew that most other delivery services would cater to traditional couples. Rather than get drowned out in their conversation, we decided to start a conversation of our own by prioritizing other, less often celebrated, kinds of love.

Ultimately, our task was to show consumers that DoorDash could be a go-to destination for same-day flower delivery on Valentine's Day by meeting two important KPI's: 200MM earned media impressions and 500k social impressions.

With a target audience of 18-30 year old DoorDash consumers, 52% of which are women, we decided that we should take the conversation on self-love literally this Valentine's Day. While female self-pleasure remains taboo in mainstream conversations, many women have found a safe space to celebrate their own pleasure on social media – especially on TikTok.

We grounded the conversation in destigmatizing female self-pleasure in the most iconic Valentine’s Day gift — a bouquet of red roses – and the most TikTok viral sex toy – The Rose ™.

Introducing: The Self Love Bouquet, a bouquet available exclusively through DoorDash that is made of 11 real roses and one Rose ™ , the best selling female sex-toy of the last five years.

We leveraged the billions of built-in TikTok views on the #rosetoy into guaranteed positive attention and purchases from a demographic that typically hates the holiday – single women.

More women than ever are spending Valentine’s Day alone (1 in 4, according to SWNS). DoorDash’s target audience for Valentine’s Day was existing consumers between 18-30 years old. With 52% of DoorDash consumers being women, we knew that we’d have to craft a narrative that gave single women permission to enjoy Valentine’s Day to the same extent that people in couples would.

This meant capitalizing on the existing narratives around pleasure, passion, and romance that are always front and center on Valentine’s Day – and tailoring them to single women. Our key message was: Be your own Valentine. Buy yourself flowers.

Through the use of curated mailers, we secured 963,200 social media impressions, with total impressions landing over 749,000,000 thanks to broadcast coverage and coverage in multiple online publications listed below.

Over the 7-day runtime of the campaign, we secured coverage that included standalone features for The Self-Love bouquet in Hypebae (twice!), 21 Ninety, Yahoo! News, Bossip, The Drum (where we were named Ad of the Day), Little Black Book, and more. In addition, we garnered prominent coverage locally, with highlights including Detroit Metro Times and broadcast coverage in Los Angeles, Bakersfield, CA, and Corpus Christi, TX.

Through sending curated mailers, we secured posts and full unboxings from Buzzfeed’s Pero Like (436K+ followers) and Cocoa Butter (262K+ followers), in addition to influencers and reporters in the space like Ashley Cobb (50K+ followers), Danielle Canada (13.1K followers) and Hypebae’s Gigi Fong (5K followers). We generated an estimated social reach of over 963K from multiple outlets and reporters sharing the news on their channels.

Our secured coverage included standalone features for the Self-Love bouquet in:

Hypebae (twice) “DOORDASH DELIVERS BOUQUETS WITH TIKTOK'S VIRAL ROSE TOY FOR VALENTINE'S DAY” & “WHAT TO DO WHEN YOU DON'T GIVE A F-CK ABOUT VALENTINE'S DAY”

21 Ninety “Add Self-Love (and self-pleasure) to Your DoorDash Order This Valentine’s Day”

Yahoo! News “Add Self-Love (And Self-Pleasure) To Your DoorDash Order This Valentines Day”

Bossip “Some Strong Self Loving: DoorDash Champions Solo V-Day Celebrations With Roses & Rose Toys”

The Drum (named Ad of the Day) “US Ad of the Day: DoorDash celebrates self-love on V-Day with vibrating roses”

Little Black Book “DoorDash Champions Self-Love to Deliver 'Happy Endings' with Rosy Valentine’s Day Campaign”

We received prominent coverage locally, with highlights including Detroit Metro Times and broadcast coverage in Los Angeles, Bakersfield, CA, and Corpus Christi, TX.

Through the use of curated mailers, we secured posts and full unboxings from:

Buzzfeed’s Pero Like (436K+ followers)

Cocoa Butter (262K+ followers)

Ashley Cobb (50K+ followers)

Danielle Canada (13.1K followers)

Hypebae’s Gigi Fong (5K followers)

We generated an estimated social reach of over 963K.

The discourse on social media is no stranger to self-pleasure, with sex toys and sex-positivtiy gaining more buzz in recent years.TikTok was filled with videos about one toy in particular that broke the internet in 2021, The Rose Toy. Hashtags like #rosetoy amounted to 226.9 million views alone (TikTok, 2023). We were able to capitalize on these millions of views and leverage them to create a massive social media conversation around the inclusion of The Rose ™, a clitoral sex toy that just so happened to be shaped like a rose, into our bouquet.

Then, less than a month before Valentine’s Day, Miley Cyrus dropped the self-love anthem of 2023, “Flowers.” Miley’s iconic and powerful line “I can buy myself flowers” built the perfect space in culture for DoorDash to champion people buying themselves flowers during Valentine's Day.