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Instacart Brings the Big Game Home With We're Here
Instacart's 'We're Here' is a 30-second Super Bowl commercial created by TBWA\Chiat\Day L.A. that aired during the second quarter of Super Bowl LIX on February 9, 2025, marking the brand's first-ever Big Game appearance and repositioning Instacart from a grocery-delivery utility into a multi-brand eCommerce platform built for the moments consumers care about most.
The campaign's central premise is straightforward and culturally anchored. Instacart does not simply deliver groceries — it delivers the brands that define how people experience shared moments, with game day serving as the definitive proof point. Approximately 12 iconic brand mascots appeared in the spot, according to The Current, including Chester Cheetah, the Kool-Aid Man, the Pillsbury Doughboy, and Mountain Dew's PuppyMonkeyBaby, among others. Each mascot functions as a visual shorthand for a beloved consumer brand, collectively illustrating the breadth of Instacart's catalogue and its ability to aggregate the products audiences actually reach for when they gather around a screen.
In the United States, where Super Bowl advertising represents the single most competitive media environment of the year, entering for the first time is a strategic declaration as much as a creative one. TBWA\Chiat\Day L.A. and Instacart began developing this Super Bowl effort in summer 2024, according to MediaPost, with the campaign publicly announced on November 21, 2024, per both MediaPost and Deli Market News. The extended development window reflects the ambition of the undertaking: coordinating licensing rights and creative integration across roughly a dozen major consumer brands simultaneously. The result is a campaign that earns its place in the Delivery Services conversation by making the value proposition felt rather than stated, cementing Instacart's identity as the platform present for every game day need across the US market. Clapboard Score: 69/100.
Instacart enters Super Bowl LIX with a clear strategic intent: to shift consumer perception away from single-category grocery delivery and toward a multi-brand eCommerce platform relevant to peak cultural moments. The game day framing is not decorative — it is load-bearing strategy. By anchoring the campaign to the Super Bowl, Instacart claims relevance at the exact moment when demand for rapid, reliable delivery of snacks, beverages, and household staples spikes most sharply across the United States.
The competitive context makes this positioning essential. In the US on-demand delivery market, Instacart faces direct pressure from DoorDash, which has expanded aggressively beyond restaurant delivery into grocery and convenience, and from Amazon, whose logistics infrastructure and Prime membership base give it structural advantages in household and pantry replenishment. Against these rivals, Instacart's differentiator has historically been its depth of grocery retail partnerships, but 'We're Here' articulates a broader ambition: to be the delivery layer underneath consumer brands themselves, not merely the conduit between a single retailer and a customer's door.
The strategic intelligence embedded in the mascot-led creative is considerable. According to The Current, the campaign repositioned Instacart from a grocery-delivery utility into a multi-brand platform, and the mascot device accomplishes this without a word of category explanation. Each character carries decades of brand equity, and their collective appearance signals to US consumers that Instacart is where their favourite brands live. The US online food and grocery delivery market sits within a rapidly expanding global context — the global food-delivery industry was estimated at approximately $173.57 billion in 2025, representing a 10.7 percent year-over-year increase, according to Deliverect — and Instacart's Super Bowl investment reflects confidence that scale in the United States remains the decisive competitive battleground for eCommerce delivery in 2025.
Wayne McClammy directed Instacart's 'We're Here,' according to both Muse by Clios and Unblock Coffee, bringing to the project a track record in high-energy, character-driven commercial work that makes him a considered choice for a spot requiring tonal precision across more than a dozen beloved brand figures. A separate crediting note exists: The One Club attributes direction to Stephanie Ciosek, and available sources do not clarify whether these references describe different assets or reflect a crediting discrepancy within the same production. Both attributions appear in the public record and are documented as such.
The creative execution places enormous weight on the mascots themselves. Chester Cheetah, the Kool-Aid Man, the Pillsbury Doughboy, and Mountain Dew's PuppyMonkeyBaby are among the characters confirmed by The Current and other sources as participants. Each mascot carries a specific tonal register — some irreverent, some warm, some outright absurdist — and the craft challenge is maintaining coherence across that range without any single character overwhelming the Instacart brand identity. TBWA\Chiat\Day L.A. solves this through structural unity: every mascot converges on the same promise, arriving together as a declaration of availability and care rather than competing for screen dominance.
Courtney Nelson, President of TBWA\Chiat\Day L.A., described the creative intent directly, as reported by LBBOnline on January 30, 2025: 'We dedicated ourselves to capturing the essence of the Big Game's most iconic moments and weaving them into a narrative that truly represents Instacart's mission to provide care for their customers.' That statement makes explicit what the spot communicates visually — that the Big Game is not simply a media placement but a creative context that the agency treated as its primary material. Coordinating licensing agreements across approximately 12 major consumer brands represents a significant production undertaking, and the seamlessness of their integration on screen is itself a measure of craft.
Instacart's 'We're Here' earned a Cannes Lions shortlist in the Brand Experience and Activation category, specifically Sponsorship and Partnership, in 2025, according to the Cannes Lions public archive. The campaign also appeared in The One Show awards archive for 2025, per oneclub.org. These two recognitions from the industry's most scrutinised award bodies confirm that 'We're Here' registered with creative juries as a credible and well-executed piece of Super Bowl advertising, not simply a media buy.
No verified third-party performance data quantifying sales lift, app downloads, or brand-tracking shifts from the 'We're Here' campaign is publicly available. What the structural evidence does support is a campaign designed for broad US market reach and strong recall mechanics. A 30-second in-game Super Bowl LIX placement delivers one of the largest simultaneous live audiences in United States television, providing Instacart with a reach profile that no digital activation can replicate at equivalent depth. The mascot-led creative maximises that reach by deploying recognition triggers that operate across age groups and consumer segments simultaneously.
The Cannes shortlist placement in Sponsorship and Partnership is particularly instructive. It signals that jurors read the mascot licensing strategy not as a novelty device but as a genuine creative and commercial partnership model — one that extends Instacart's brand relationships beyond transactional retail into co-authored cultural storytelling. For a company making its first Super Bowl appearance in 2025, the combination of industry recognition and clear strategic repositioning, from grocery utility to multi-brand eCommerce platform in the United States, represents a meaningful return on a high-stakes creative investment.
Instacart's 'We're Here' is the brand's first-ever Super Bowl commercial, a 30-second spot created by TBWA\Chiat\Day L.A. that aired during Super Bowl LIX on February 9, 2025. The campaign featured approximately 12 iconic brand mascots to position Instacart as a multi-brand eCommerce delivery platform in the United States, according to The Current.
TBWA\Chiat\Day L.A. created Instacart's 'We're Here' campaign. According to MediaPost, the agency and Instacart began developing the Super Bowl effort in summer 2024. Courtney Nelson, President of TBWA\Chiat\Day L.A., described the creative goal as capturing the essence of the Big Game's most iconic moments, as reported by LBBOnline.
Wayne McClammy is credited as director of 'We're Here' by Muse by Clios and Unblock Coffee. The One Club separately credits Stephanie Ciosek as director. Available public sources do not clarify whether these attributions refer to different versions of the campaign or reflect a crediting discrepancy within the same production.
Approximately 12 brand mascots appeared in 'We're Here,' according to The Current. Confirmed participants include Chester Cheetah, the Kool-Aid Man, the Pillsbury Doughboy, and Mountain Dew's PuppyMonkeyBaby. Their collective presence was designed to demonstrate Instacart's ability to deliver a wide range of beloved consumer brands across the United States during peak moments like game day.
Instacart's 'We're Here' received a Cannes Lions shortlist in Brand Experience and Activation — Sponsorship and Partnership — in 2025, according to the Cannes Lions archive. The campaign also appeared in The One Show awards archive for 2025, per oneclub.org. Clapboard awarded the campaign a score of 69 out of 100.
According to The Current and Grocery Dive, 'We're Here' repositioned Instacart from a grocery-delivery utility into a multi-brand eCommerce platform. The Super Bowl LIX placement in February 2025 gave Instacart a mass-reach moment in the United States to compete more directly against rivals like DoorDash and Amazon in the on-demand delivery services market.
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