CMO Laura Jones talks Instacart's journey to the Super Bowl

Business Insider

Laura Jones, Instacart's CMO, talks about the company's journey to advertising at the Super Bowl and how it drove growth for the brand.

Transcript

00:00So the CEO asked me, okay, what's the idea? How do I know it's going to be good? And I said,

00:04you know what? If it's not good, you can fire me.

00:12When I joined Instacart in 2021, we had a really strong lower funnel program and we were focused

00:17on demand capture. We were just coming off the pandemic and there had been a ton of organic

00:22demand, but we knew that it needed to really evolve into a full funnel as life returned to

00:28normalcy. So we had to think about how do we not just capture demand, but generate it. And that

00:33meant opening up new channels, everything from social to streaming to audio, and eventually all

00:39the way to linear television. We also had to build out measurement for the full funnel and really look

00:45at how could we move from channel level ROAS to portfolio level ROAS. After doing all this work,

00:52it freed us up to start testing into new formats, including high reach linear television. We bought

00:58the NFL the year prior, we bought the Olympics last summer, and we actually saw a top line lift

01:04from the Olympics. And that led us to realize that we were ready for the biggest stage in marketing,

01:10the Super Bowl. So from there, we took all of those learnings, we took those results, and we took that

01:15business case to the CFO and the CEO so that we can make our Super Bowl debut in 2025. When I took this

01:22business case to the CEO and the CFO of Instacart, they understood the business case because we had

01:29great data points from the Olympics, we had great data from the previous NFL season, and we all agreed

01:34that there could be a strong business rationale to go to the Super Bowl. But the big question was,

01:39what's the idea? And you can't make a Super Bowl ad unless it's going to be a good one, because it's the

01:43largest possible stage, 130 million Americans were going to be watching. So we knew if we went,

01:48it had to be a great spot. I put my own personal brand on the line because I knew that our team was

01:54ready. We had worked so hard. We had learned so much from the journey. And we wanted this opportunity

02:00to really go to bat and show what we were capable of and drive huge results for the business. So

02:05we said, you know what, we're going to make it great. And you can count on us and really put it all

02:10on the line. I think what I underestimated at the time was actually what that meant in terms of the

02:16level of pressure that we were then facing to go from a blank sheet of paper to a tight brief to

02:23an iterative process of getting to an amazing idea. But we had all committed that we wouldn't stop

02:28until it was a great ad. There were a lot of moments along the way when, you know, things looked like

02:35they might fall apart or someone said no when we needed them to say yes. And we said, we're not going

02:39to take no for an answer. We're going to will this into existence. And I really had to learn how to kind

02:44of hold that anxiety, process it, not transfer it to the team, and just keep everyone focused on

02:50making the best possible ad. And in the end, we all brought our A game. We brought our brand partners

02:55along with us. We had nine different brands in our final Super Bowl spot and showed up for our debut

03:01with our ad, We're Here. The results from the Super Bowl were better than we could have ever expected.

03:08Not only did we see huge business impact, we also saw brand and revenue impact. So specifically,

03:13we had a 72% increase in new to site user traffic following the Super Bowl. We also had a 14% year

03:22rear sales lift from the Super Bowl. And in addition to that, we raised upper funnel metrics. The real

03:28bonus was that in addition to all of that growth in brand lift, we also were able to generate revenue

03:34from the project because we had brought so many brands into the ecosystem. And we have a full funnel

03:39ads product within our app and off platform. So we're able to put together packages that our CPG

03:45partners could buy into to support conversion of all the traffic that we generated. So it was really a

03:52huge win for the business. I think for me, the other part that was really gratifying was the creative win.

03:58Creative is definitely part of what I love most about this job. And not only were we the top ranked

04:05first time advertiser in the USA Today ad meter, we're here at Cannes. And just yesterday, we found

04:10out that we were shortlisted for the brand partnerships and activation category, which is a huge validation

04:16to be recognized on this global scale as a North American brand. So we're incredibly proud of the work

04:21and the impact it drove for the business.

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