DoorDashers' True Late-Night Stories Fueled These Strange, Smoochy Ads

Director Nick Ball channels David Lynch and 'The X-Files'

You’re a DoorDash delivery pro. One night, you experience something odd while collecting an order at a diner. All the patrons start passionately making out, and the cook’s got a bizarre look on his face. So does that big-haired dude playing sad songs on the jukebox.

Sure, you’re a tad nervous. The situation’s tough to read. Sweat rolls down your brow.

But never fear, you shared that tale of the unexpected online, so DD Canada and agency Hard Work Club made it into the creepy commercial below. (Anything else you got up to that night is strictly your own affair.)

“Nighttime’s a trip. Dashers take it for you,” the tagline says. But thanks to this campaign, we can share the thrill vicariously. Pucker up:

Actor Divian Ladwa—who really sells it with his facial expressions—returns as the intrepid Dasher in a second spot. He drops off some chow at a remote house as beastly eyes burn through the gloom. C’mon, Divian, milk it!

MJZ/OPC director Nick Ball—who wowed us a few months back with Tesco’s friendly fruit giant—provides the perfect mix of edginess, dark humor and cinematic spark.

The work serves as a neat counterpoint to DoorDash’s salvo last week, with real drop-off photos serving as inspirations. Both efforts seek to tie DD further into the culture, taking different paths to play up the brand’s everyday utility. (Though frankly, some customers might enjoy making their own pickup at that greasy spoon.)

Here, agency cofounder and ECD Meghan Kraemer and director Ball guide Muse through the strategy…

Why tells stories from the Dashers’ POV?

Meghan Kraemer: The Dasher lens felt both like a fresh perspective and one with all kinds of strange, funny and very human stories wrapped up in it. We were inspired by all these tales Dashers were sharing online about the things they encounter while moving through the world at night. And it felt like there was a whole side of delivery advertising we hadn’t really seen explored.

It’s certainly an unexpected perspective.

Meghan Kraemer: Most delivery stories naturally begin with the person at home and what they want. We were interested in turning the camera around: the Dasher as our way into the night, briefly passing through these little nocturnal worlds already in progress while the rest of us stayed comfortably on the couch. That became the central thought behind the campaign.

Did you sift through 100s of stories to get these two scenarios?

Meghan Kraemer: There were definitely some where we thought, well, that one is staying on Reddit. But we were never interested in turning the Dasher experience into something too grim for the sake of entertainment. What interested us much more were the weird, funny and very human moments you stumble into when you’re moving through the world late at night, briefly entering strange little stories already in progress.

Why dabble in suspense/horror?

Meghan Kraemer: The creature-feature territory was almost a no-brainer. There were lots of accounts of dark rural roads, animals wandering about, strange shapes appearing in the headlights. The cows felt almost too perfect because… is there anything less frightening on the planet? You can build all that tension and then release it instantly. And we remembered that cows’ eyes glow in the dark when headlights hit them, which was such a deliciously surreal detail.

Nick Ball: It was a long, cold, dark night in the rural Czech Republic. It was very simple in many ways, but got horribly complicated once the cows started misbehaving. We lost a couple of them before the shoot started, they spooked themselves for no reason at all, and then the guys at Untold Studios had to do some digital magic to combine plates and make the numbers work.

The kissy stuff is WAY more scary, actually.

Meghan Kraemer: “Milkshakes & Heartaches” took a longer road. A lot of the late-night stories were more familiar: stoned people, drunk people, the very real weirdness of human behavior after midnight. I put myself through university serving tables and slinging cocktails, so that world felt extremely familiar to me. At 2 a.m., you see it all. And it occurred to me that for a Dasher it’s not so different, you walk into a restaurant for 30 seconds and enter a whole little universe already in motion.

I originally wrote “Milkshakes” almost as a character study, inspired by those Dasher anecdotes and my own years behind the bar. Nick had the very good instinct to simplify it—to find the thing inside the thing, as great directors do. Everyone kept coming back to the kissing, including our incredible client lead Heather Cameron. So about two weeks out from the shoot, we decided: what if we stop being reasonable and just make everyone kiss?

Nick Ball: the cast was made up entirely of real couples, found through a Facebook callout, with relationship lengths ranging from 50+ years to 8 years, three years, 18 months, and then… three days. That couple had met while filming something the week before, and by the time they arrived on our set, they had each split up with their respective partners and were together. Whether their relationship survived much beyond the shoot, I don’t know. I’ll let you guys try and guess who that couple was.

Related: Can DoorDash Help You Escape Your Gnarly Roommate and His Stinky Pets?