Mood Board: Behind the scenes of Gopuff’s not-so-Super Bowl ad

Gopuff, the Philadelphia-based instant-delivery service founded in 2013, considered buying a Super Bowl ad this year, its SVP of business, Dan Folkman, told Marketing Brew. But the company ended up going a different route, instead producing a “Quartertime Show” starring rapper, actor, and comedian Dave Burd, aka Lil Dicky, that was live-streamed on YouTube and Twitter between the first and second quarters of the Super Bowl.

“Fiscal responsibility and scrappiness are in our blood where we started the company, in Philadelphia, and so we wanted to do it a little bit differently, both creatively and philosophically,” Folkman told us. “What we did know was we needed to do something that would break through, because it’s the most crowded day of the year.”

We spoke with Folkman, and the agency executives that put together the campaign to find out more about how it came to be and its results.

The brief: The Gopuff team wanted to work with Lil Dicky, a Philly-area native, and create “a show or an event that lives within the platform of this day of the Super Bowl without being attached to the Super Bowl,” Folkman said.

That’s the challenge it presented to creative agency Mirimar, co-founded by brothers John and Luke McKelvey, who serve as chief creative officer and managing director, respectively.

Mirimar came up with the idea of a Quartertime Show in which Lil Dicky performed online as opposed to linear TV.

The talent: The premise of the Quartertime Show hinges on the idea that since Lil Dicky wasn’t invited to perform in the actual halftime show, he took matters into his own hands. Luke said he believes that sort of self-awareness and humor, paired with the creative freedom the team offered, helped convince Lil Dicky to participate. “He was part of every edit session,” Luke said. “He’s really had his hands all over it and was an amazing collaborator.”

Plus, the Gopuff team brought in some production staff from Lil Dicky’s TV show, FXX’s Dave, including Kitao Sakura, who directed one of its episodes. The ad also features Davionte “GaTa” Ganter, who’s been performing with Lil Dicky for years and who is also an actor on his show.

Placing products: Since Gopuff is a platform for brands to sell their stuff, it only made sense to spotlight other companies, like celebrity brands that are carried on the platform. Cardi B’s Whipshots vodka-infused whipped cream, Kendall Jenner’s 818 Tequila, and Serendipity ice cream, which is partly owned by Selena Gomez, all appear in the show.

Luke said the team decided to make the integrations with these companies obvious, relying on their celebrity founders’ reach to help promote the show.

“Let’s put their products into our ads in a really humorous, self-aware way and get the engagement through that,” Luke said. “It’s a much better way of dealing with it than trying to treat the brand integration aspect as a thing we’re trying to really shy away from as we try to make more entertaining ads.”

Pre-game: To spread the word about the Quartertime Show, Gopuff and Mirimar engaged in some influencer marketing. The team sent out about 300 packages to influencers, celebrities, and other friends of the company that contained Gopuff merch, products like Whipshots and 818 Tequila, and, of course, info about how to tune into the show.

According to Gopuff, that resulted in “online engagement” from the likes of Cardi B (who also appeared on the show), Kendall Jenner, Drake, Bryce Hall, Tinx, and Boy with No Job, for a collective reach of over 63 million.

Plus, during the livestream, Lil Dicky shared a promo code to drive new customers to Gopuff. “You’ve got three quarters left of football,” John said. “It’s kind of a perfect moment to experience Gopuff.”

The results: The show racked up more than 4 million views in under 24 hours across Twitter and YouTube, according to Gopuff. As of the morning of Feb. 16, three days after the Super Bowl, that number was up to 7.5 million.