DoorDash Spent $5.5 Million To Advertise Their $1 Million Charity Donation

Image: DoorDash via Instagram

Now that BrokeAssStuart.com is something of a local news organization, we get plenty of press releases from companies wanting to play up their charitable efforts. Sometimes these are excellent grassroots causes, other times the press releases come from highly paid corporate New York public relations firms operating 3,000 miles from here, talking up some manner of “brand campaign” where these supposedly good-guy corporations are trying to draw attention to the fact that they did something nice for charity. And we always wonder… if you paid all this money for a big, fancy PR firm, why didn’t you just give that money to charity too?

this is what we get for not publicly funding Sesame Street https://t.co/2wMzOc6NpA

— Whitney Hu 胡安行 ☀️ (@whitney_hu) February 8, 2021

Yet we have never seen a more blatant prioritization of marketing the charitable effort over the actual charitable effort itself, than in the DoorDash ‘Sesame Street’ Super Bowl commercial that aired Sunday. The delivery app that is killing your favorite restaurants with double-digit commission fees and low-balling drivers with insanely low pay said in their nostalgia-bait commercial that “For every order, we’ll donate $1 to Sesame Workshop.” (Sesame Workshop is the nonprofit responsible for “Sesame Street,” and they do have many valid social justice initiatives.)

Image: DoorDash via Instagram

Not long after the game, DoorDash announced that they had raised $1 million for this charitable effort. What they don’t mention is that they spent $5.5 million to buy that ad slot, according to numbers obtained by PYMENTS.com. If you want to support these social justice initiatives, why not just contribute the money instead of buying a Super Bowl ad???

Doordash spent $7 million to advertise a $1 million donation.https://t.co/jQwxrfmBt4

— Emey ?? (@emeyerson) February 8, 2021

As noted in the tweet above, $5.5 million is just the amount they paid CBS for the ad slot. They probably also paid Daveed Diggs for his time and shillery, and of course now that Disney owns the Muppets trademark, Disney probably had to be paid a share too. So the true cost of the commercial is likely far higher.

"Jeffrey Fang's two toddlers were abducted when his car was stolen, Feb. 7. A gig driver, he was delivering for @DoorDash when his kids were taken."

Doordash pays workers below min wage. This leads to workers & their families not able to afford childcare. This is on @doordash. https://t.co/cej7LeKmf0

— Gig Workers Rising (@GigWorkersRise) February 7, 2021

And as many viewers noted on Twitter, a DoorDash driver had his two children abducted late Saturday night while driving for DoorDash and his vehicle was carjacked. He had to deliver for DoorDash with his one-year-old and five-year-old in the car, because DoorDash pays its drivers nowhere near minimum wage let alone a living wage, and its drivers cannot afford childcare. Keep that in mind if you rewatch DoorDash’s “Sesame Street” commercial time and time again, or want to order using DoorDash because that measly $1 donation (that DoorDash is no longer paying because it was capped at $1 million).

Doordash is valued at 29 billion dollars. They take on average, 25% of total orders from restaurants. If average order is $30 (probably way low), that’s $7.50 in commission. They’ll donate $1 for each order tonight. Capped. Small biz paid for their super bowl ad. And the donation https://t.co/sLeqBtJejG

— Ben Ustick (@BenUstick) February 8, 2021