When an army of Reddit and Twitter trolls incited a flamewar against Grubhub’s “Delivery Dance” campaign, we didn’t back down. Rather, we saw it as an opportunity to create a deeper connection with our community on social media. We decided to bring the fire back to them with a challenge - make your own remixed version of the ad and share it for a chance to see it on broadcast on television.

We tweeted out the contest prompt, rules, and details on January 16 with #DeliverTheRemix, and watched the submissions explode, with over 8.5K entries.

Finally, after a weekend of wading through all the responses, we selected a winner and re-edited the original spot with a brand new track. Then, we put the new “Delivery Dance” remix live on air and rewarded the winner with a year of free Grubhub.

Following the contest, Grubhub’s social engagement was up 225.6%, and compared to the category competition, our social share-of-voice skyrocketed with an increase of 187%.

Since the launch of this campaign and contest initiative Grubhub has amassed over 142M impressions across social and digital channels without any online paid media support.

Beyond the numbers, there are now entire YouTube channels, unauthorized and with zero involvement from Grubhub, dedicated to “Delivery Dance” copycat videos, deep-dive investigations into character backstories of the “Grubhub cinematic universe.”