When It Comes to Driving Sales, Social Commerce Wins Over the Super Bowl for Gopuff

The instant commerce industry—made up of companies promising groceries and other essentials delivered in 30 minutes or less—has taken convenience to the next level, fulfilling consumers' wants and needs in mere minutes with just a few clicks. During Adweek’s Commerceweek, Daniel Folkman, svp of business at the instant commerce company Gopuff, talked delivering convenience with Amy Lanzi, CEO of Digitas North America, an integrated advertising agency. Gopuff is a digital service that delivers basic groceries, snacks, alcohol, baby products and home essentials directly to doorsteps. How the company differentiates itself from similar services is that it’s not a courier service; instead, they have all of the inventory on hand in warehouses dubbed “micro-fulfillment centers.” Fast Food’s Next Battleground: In-House Delivery Gopuff targets millennials and Gen Z, Folkman said, because those generations are less likely to be dependent on brick-and-mortar stores. The company recently did a campaign with social media influencers to push the message of “discovery to consumption in under 30 minutes,” Folkman said. Lanzi, who helped with Gopuff’s recent marketing campaigns, spoke about how leveraging social media creators is a great opportunity for not only brand growth but instant sales. “This is a way of thinking about social commerce and how we are using things like collab ads to then, of course, be able to explode inside of a social channel and make that a shoppable storefront in a hyper-local way,” Lanzi said. The duo also spoke about the juxtaposition between high-end traditional advertising, such as buying an ad during the Super Bowl, and new age advertising, such as immersive social media campaigns. Folkman believes the companies that don’t innovate with the rapidly changing ways that people consume content will struggle. “The brands that start taking control of the dollars they're spending and create landing points to drive sales and transactions will win,” Folkman said. “I think it is very similar to what we saw with the rise of ecommerce 10 years ago, and over the next 18 months you’re going to see the separation of the innovative brands that are taking control of this and the brands that get left behind who are still spending $20 million to $40 million on the Super Bowl and have nothing to show for it other than some awareness study they do three months later.” At the end of the session, a panel attendee asked Folkman about how Gopuff measures the effects of TikTok advertising. Folkman said the return on investment has been clear. “Because we can take a customer from that click to a purchase, and then go back to the brand and say that those dollars drove Y in return,” Folkman said. “Some of the collab ads and otherwise, we’re seeing a return of anywhere between 400% and 500% from the dollars that are being spent, and the numbers sound big but I actually think there’s more opportunity there. "The reality of it is that people just haven’t had the opportunity to click that ad on Facebook and Tiktok and make a purchase that quickly.”