Mariota Essery

I joined DoorDash in November 2020 as Executive Creative Director, establishing our in-house agency Superette, as the powerhouse creative studio that it is today.

Superette is comprised of a collective of talented thinkers and makers with the ambition to be the best creative studio in the world. The creative team oversee and are responsible for all the creative that we do for DoorDash - from ideation to production on campaigns that live as brand campaigns, partnerships, activations, TVC, Social, Performance and CRM.

Under my remit, I am also responsible for the agency ecosystem that supports our brand and we regard these agencies as an extension of our team.

The way we work has led to award winning creative. In the last 3 years, we have won at the One show, D&AD, and Cannes - most recently winning a Grand Prix for our Valentines Day campaign in 2023, and the Grand Prix Titanium for our Super Bowl Campaign this year.

This year Superette was ranked number 2 in-house agency by the One Club for Creativity and in the top 20 World Creative Rankings by The Drum. DoorDash was recognized as one of the top 50 hottest brands with Us Weekly and Influential and Number 10 in the brand category of the Cannes Industry rankings.

A critical purpose of the DoorDash merchant business is to give local restaurants access to the resources they need to thrive, and Secret Menu was founded on the belief that one restaurant’s story can help or inspire another.

More than simple profiles about restaurants and owners, these stories delve into the layered experience of running a restaurant, from day-to-day operations to preserving tradition to creating community. This imagery-rich publication uses real, authentic stories to give restaurants, resources, inspiration, and connection, regardless of their relationship with DoorDash. The platform also includes hyper-local industry dinners (“Secret Dinner”) and curated collateral like customized wine labels.

In order to create a magazine that moved the needle for restaurant owners, we took a three-pronged approach. First, we met directly with business owners on the DoorDash Restaurant Advisory Council to better understand the stories they were interested in and get feedback on articles. These robust conversations helped define the magazine’s content and made it clear that material focused on (and distributed in) a highly specific market would ultimately be most impactful. Second, we deliberately commissioned local writers who were deeply immersed in the city’s food culture. We did this to uncover authentic insights and pain points worth exploring, as well as leverage insider knowledge to feature prominent local chefs. Finally, we enlisted designers, artists, and illustrators to create unique designs for each article as a way to show merchants, rather than tell them, that we understand and appreciate the individuality of their brands and business needs.

Over three years, we published three issues of Secret Menu, available in print and digitally.

We knew from our conversations with merchants that material focused on specific markets would be more impactful than more general content. As a result, each issue was locally oriented and distributed via a thoughtful, targeted approach. Issue #1 dove deep into Los Angeles’s diverse Asian restaurant communities, while issue #2 explored Miami’s hustle and glam. Issue #3 celebrated Philly, a city known for taking risks and breaking rules.

The 20-25 articles in each issue were written by local writers about local chefs and restaurateurs. More than simple profiles, every story delves into the layered experience of running a restaurant, from day-to-day operations to preserving tradition to creating community.

We celebrated the launch of each magazine with curated, hyper-local industry dinners, a website with a dedicated landing page for each article, and locally targeted email outreach.

Collaboration with:
Design: Studio Yukiko
Production: Mike TeeVee

DoorDash is renowned for restaurant delivery, but not for the millions of other items it offers.

To truly change how people saw the brand, DoorDash needed a huge, exciting way to launch its new positioning: not just telling people but showcasing its ability to deliver just about anything.

The idea was breathtakingly simple: DoorDash would deliver all the products advertised in the Super Bowl.

But it was also breathtakingly audacious.

Delivering everything advertised during the Super Bowl required rethinking brand partnerships, rethinking promotions, rethinking direct response, rethinking real time social, rethinking what a Super Bowl campaign should look like and how a Super Bowl advertiser should act.

Collaboration with Wieden Kennedy Portland

Forty years ago, Kurtis Blow dropped Basketball, a tribute to the game whose music video became an instant icon. Now, four decades later, DoorDash reimagined it with DashPass.

Basketball 2.0, an updated take on the classic, featuring today’s most culturally relevant stars in the lyrics and shining a well-deserved spotlight on the WNBA as well.

Valentine’s Day is corrupt with consumerism and plagued by outdated traditions. Someone decided to take the most universal emotion of all (love!) and sell it as something that only couples are intended to enjoy. In order to sell more flowers on Valentine’s Day, we had to broaden our audience - and show people that all love is worthy of recognition. Our goal was to create a buzz-worthy activation/idea that got people to buy Valentine’s Day flowers (and more) on DoorDash.

Collaboration with: GUT LA

With the launch of the DoorDash Brand Platform Your Door to More came a series of evergreen brand films to show our audience that DoorDash truly does offer everything you need whenever you need it most.

Collaboration with: Wieden Kennedy Portland

In the United States, as in most of the world, giving flowers to another person is an inherently gendered act. While men often give flowers to others, they seldom receive them.

Because flowers have historically been associated with femininity, most men are never given flowers in their lifetime.  In fact, it's often at their funeral that men first experience this gesture. But contrary to societal norms, many men say they would actually love to receive flowers.

We grounded the conversation in destigmatizing flower-giving by flipping the script and asking ourselves: why can’t flowers be for everyone, including men? This Valentine’s Day, DoorDash helped the public reimagine who can give and receive flowers.

By broadening the tradition, DoorDash sold flowers to a new demographic: people who’ve  never bought flowers for a man before. We encouraged customers to break age-old stereotypes and normalize a new behavior: gifting flowers to men as a sign of love and appreciation on Valentine’s Day.

Collaboration with: GUT LA

A variety of TV, for a variety of DoorDash campaigns since 2020.

Özgür Seyben is a Dasher and filmmaker from Turkey, who immigrated with his family to Twin Falls, ID. Inspired by the experience of immigrating to a foreign country, he wrote a screenplay titled Alien (The Other) with the ambition of turning it into a film.

Özgür’s script was chosen to be produced through Beyond the Dash, a program created to provide Dashers access to resources in pursuit of their dreams. In partnership with Özgür, Tribeca Studios, Chromista, and director Patricia Riggen, Alien (The Other) came to life with a triumphant premiere at the Tribeca Festival.

To promote their 21:9 TV, Philips wanted to own the world of cinema.

What we created was a website that housed a bad ass, visually stunning movie that worked as a continual looping tracking shot that had so much detail, you  wanted to watch it over and over again.

Voted best commercial of the decade in Adweek.

Additionally, it was the first time in history a digital piece of content won a Cannes Grand Prix in the film category.

Amazingly, the internet has catagorised the project on Wikipedia and you can get all the facts you want about the project here. 

The 2014 adidas World Cup film “Messi’s Dream” garnered 30 million hits on YouTube in its first few days, and asked viewers to
make a choice: all in or nothing? Depending on which they clicked, a different online world would open up for them.

"The Wake Up Call", a long form film followed.

In contrast to the intense, brooding anthems and messaging that flood the World Cup, we thought it was also important to embrace the fun side of football. 

In the film “Don’t fool with Old School” Football legends Beckham and Zidane take on Bale and Moura, who seem more interested in a video game than the beautiful game, and school them, turning Beckingham Palace into their own personal football pitch.

To launch the adidas Brazuca as the official ball of the 2014 World Cup, we created a digital campaign around a technological first: a ball that could see.

In collaboration with Deep Local, we designed and manufactured a Brazuca ball that would capture the world's largest sporting event from a never before seen POV: the 360degree perspective from cameras built into the match ball.

The “Brazucam” would capture content, collect data, stream live and be strong enough to withstand the best footballers in the world. 

Philips faced a challenge. 

People had heard of the Wake Up Light, but they still weren’t sure how it worked, or if it worked. To prove its effectiveness, we went to the most Northern town in the world, Longyearbyen, and gave away over 200 lights to townsfolk to get them through 6 months of darkness. 

We asked them to record their progress using social media, and made several documentaries about their lives with award winning director Doug Pray. 

To celebrate the Nissan NCV having the toughest warranty in the biz, we created a campaign that put the van front and center as the hero. The creative was inspired by over-the-top, tongue in cheek action movies that are loved by fans out there.

Shot by the action director Louis Leterrier, The Long form film was released on online followed up by movie posters, product videos, and a website starring none other than Mickey Rourke (The Wrestler, Sin City, The Expendables) and Carl Weathers (Rocky, Predator,) as two badass government agents reunited for one last job. 

With so many conversations happening every second on Twitter, it's hard to cut through the noise and see the best content on offer. 

So, Twitter created Moments - a new feature that lets you access the best tweets, in an instant.

To promote Moments, we embraced the users' creative culture and spoke to our core audience of 18-24 year olds by showing original content created by real users.