DoorDash
Helping DoorDash deliver in a room full of AI and machine learning industry leaders.
Industry: Technology / Robotics & Autonomous Delivery
What We Did: Competitive Analysis, Employer Brand Strategy, Conference Booth Concept, Copywriting, Asset Design, Activation Strategy
Most people know DoorDash as the app on their phone that brings them snacks, groceries, or almost any household need on demand. Fewer know that inside the company lives a robotics and automation team building end-to-end AI for commerce.
DoorDash Labs launched their first commercial robot, Dot, in early 2026. Dot is three feet wide, has eight external cameras, and moves at up to 20 mph through bike lanes, sidewalks, and driveways.
It’s the infrastructure underneath that sets Dot apart. DoorDash already has the customers, the merchants, and the logistics network. The hard problems that trouble other autonomous vehicle (AV) companies? Largely solved. What's left is the work that actually excites a research engineer.
That's the narrative DoorDash Labs needed to share. They came to us with just two weeks to draft the story.
The Challenge
For the first time, DoorDash was attending the Computer Vision and Pattern Recognition Conference (CVPR), a renowned event for AI and robotics research. Over 10,000 scientists, engineers, and PhD candidates attend annually. The exhibitor floor at CVPR 2026 in Denver would include recognizable names at every turn, most with ultimate or platinum sponsorship tiers.
DoorDash Labs knew they had a 10x20 booth, two Dot robots, and a compressed timeline. What they needed was a strategic partner who could figure out what DoorDash Labs had to say in a room like this and say it in a way that would make a PhD candidate stop and read.
What We Discovered
While an engineer at a massive mobility-as-a-service company may work on a project for years without seeing it advance beyond simulation, DoorDash Labs offers the opposite. Dot is deployed in a real city, delivering to real customers. And unlike pure AV companies solving point-to-point navigation, DoorDash Labs is building AI that makes real-time decisions across a live marketplace: dynamic routing, demand prediction, last-mile robotics, and autonomous delivery interacting simultaneously.
The competitive audit confirmed that no other exhibitor in their tier was making that claim. Dot, physically present and visibly working on the conference floor, was the one thing no Silver-tier competitor could replicate. DoorDash needed to say one thing clearly to someone who had already walked past larger, louder booths: the interesting work is here, and it's already real.
The Work
Before a single word of copy was written, we mapped the competitive field, confirmed the audience profile, and identified the specific message gap DoorDash Labs could own.
We developed two full booth concepts. One clearly mapped Dot's delivery route across the backdrop as a visual journey from research to real-world deployment. The other surfaced real edge cases Dot has to solve in a speech-bubble format, written to resonate with researchers who know the difference between lab conditions and a busy Phoenix sidewalk. Rather than focus on recruitment messaging, lines across both concepts spoke plainly to explain who DoorDash Labs is.
The deliverables spanned a hero backdrop, pull-up banners, a sandwich board, stickers, and "I Met Dot" buttons. One robot stayed at the booth. The second roamed the floor with a Labs engineer at the controls, distributing local Denver snacks. More than a product demo, Dot would be an active booth testament of the technology.
Concept 1
Concept 2
Our Takeaway
Dot was a hit on the floor, delivering donuts, popcorn, swag, and smiles. And sharp storytelling paid off: engineers fielded real technical questions instead of small talk, proving a 10x20 booth could hold its own against bigger-name neighbors with far bigger budgets. For a first-time exhibitor walking into a room full of AI and robotics veterans, that level of traction reflects the value of a partner who can match the pace of the deadline without losing the substance of the story.
CVPR was the first look at simplified deliverables fit for the turnaround, and DoorDash is now positioned to carry the original concepts forward into future conferences, scaling the creative as the relationship grows.
