What Are Fresh Flower?

Doordash turns the meaning of fresh into something creepy.

I know how advertising creatives work. We’re always trying to turn the expected on its head to something new and unexpected. And it’s that twist that make a concept creative and memorable. But when you turn it on its head and it becomes creepy and disturbing is that really the best for your brand?

Doordash’s Valentine’s Day commercial for the freshest flowers just went to a place where I’m now afraid to order flowers. Of course there’s an expectation with the word “fresh” in fresh cut, or fresh from the garden, something not faded or worn, something newly arrived just picked. Doordash went to the informal side of the word which means to be presumptuous or disrespectful; forward. Okay, I get that. Like in the older classic movies when a man kisses a woman without her permission. She might slap him and call him “fresh!” So, okay, I still get it. Kissing without permission. But in this commercial, the flowers themselves kiss. They are fresh toward each other?

Now I could get onboard with that concept. But do they have to kiss each other?  Plus, the special effects on their action is so slow with music that is reminiscent of something you might watch in private. And the kiss itself is just so creepy! To me, that is just not an engaging concept that makes me want to order flowers for my Valentine. No telling what they might do to her. Surely that kind of fresh could have been depicted in another way. Being forward fresh can also be a pinch, a pat, a nudge, anything that has an intimate connotation, even a kiss, but should that be between the flowers themselves? They become more freaky than fresh.

I can see they got the shock value they may have been seeking from the concept, but that kind of shock does not support the brand, in my mind, it hurts the brand. That’s the brand I want to avoid. I would dash out the door.