Marketers are grappling with social causes. Here's how DoorDash decides how to tackle hot-button iss
- DoorDash's CMO explains how the company figures out whether to take a position on thorny social issues.
- It evaluates issues according to how they impact its core values and mission to help local communities.
- The approach helped approve an accelerator to help minority-owned businesses.
Brands have been scrambling to tie themselves to social causes to win over employees and consumers, but often wrestle with figuring which hot-button issues to wade into and what to say.
DoorDash has launched a number of socially-driven initiatives, promoting Black-owned businesses on its app, reducing its commissions by 50% for local restaurants during the pandemic, and launching an accelerator program for minority-owned CPG companies.
Chief Marketing Officer Kofi Amoo-Gottfried, named one of Insider's 2022 Most Innovative CMOs, believes such efforts have helped DoorDash keep its leading position in food delivery — the platform earned 59% of all US meal delivery sales in the month of April, according to Bloomberg Second Measure.
To figure out how to address thorny social issues and communicate them internally and externally, the company uses a system called DoorDash Compass.
Amoo-Gottfried described it like this: The company has a stated mission to help local communities and promote progress and fairness while protecting against bias and exclusion. DoorDash uses the system to evaluate how issues stack up against that mission and values.
In this way, the company green-lit an accelerator to help minority-owned businesses and SafeDash, a tool that lets delivery drivers discreetly call for help if they find themselves in a threatening situation.
"During the pandemic we've been focused on how to help each of our audiences," Amoo-Gottfried said. "How can we help Dashers continue to dash? How can we help local restaurants who no longer have people coming through their doors make it through the pandemic? How do we help customers not leaving their homes? It's less of purpose with a capital 'P' but understanding where consumers are in any given moment and being responsive to that."
DoorDash has also used the Compass as a basis for not getting involved in issues, as was the case with the 2020 Facebook ad boycott. DoorDash recognized Facebook had a hate speech problem but that it would be better addressed by working with all the platforms, although Amoo-Gottfried declined to say how it did this. (To be sure, lots of brands sat out the boycott or returned to Facebook later on anyway).
To get internal buy-in for its decisions, Amoo-Gottfried said the company communicates them to employees and gives them incentives to build products inspired by the Compass, like $5,000 to donate to a charity of their choice and $1,000 for a team activity.
"If people understand that you have a way to get to these decisions and that way feels transparent and fair and consistent, they'll understand the decision," Amoo-Gottfried said.
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