Instacart Wants To Transform Into An Inspirational Shopping Platform

Instacart has retained Grammy winner Lizzo as the face of its biggest brand campaign to date to introduce Carts, an in-app experience that will enable pop culture personalities, retailers and online creators to share shoppable, curated content.

Users of the shopping and delivery platform can view and be inspired to purchase a grocery list of Lizzo’s favorite items, including vegan Ben & Jerry’s ice cream, Impossible Burgers and Takis hot lime tortilla chips.

The Carts initiative was applauded by some of the experts on the RetailWire BrainTrust in an online discussion last week.

“I absolutely love everything about this,” wrote Melissa Minkow, director of retail strategy at CI&T. “‘Carts’ is an initiative that recognizes that consumers use Instacart differently from how they buy groceries in stores. This feature makes the platform a destination and acknowledges that it’s positioned more similarly to social media than it is to traditional online grocery shopping. Clearly consumer insights research informed this effort, and I feel strongly that other more transactional platforms would benefit from this type of creativity.”

“Kudos to Instacart for its excellent marketing — this is fresh and current and definitely a standout,” wrote retail expert Christine Russo.

“Yes!” wrote Joel Rubinson, president of Rubinson Partners, Inc. “What they are doing is elevating a transactional offering that was fueled by COVID-19 into something much, much bigger. Online for CPG [consumer packaged goods] is on the cusp of exploding and Instacart (a name they might want to also elevate, BTW) is helping to make it happen.”

Instacart has released a 30-second spot, “The World is Your Cart,” to mark Carts’ launch. It debuted following the singer’s performance during Sunday’s 2022 MTV Video Music Awards (VMAs). The company ran a full-page center spread advertisement featuring Lizzo in Sunday’s New York TimesNYT
.

Beyond Lizzo, Cart will eventually feature similar favorite foods lists from influencers, including The Old Gays, and retail partners, in addition to themed lists such as Self Care Sunday, Late Night Noms and Date Night. Brands selling on Instacart can support online discovery through Brand Pages, Shoppable Display and Shoppable Video ad formats.

The shoppable feeds aim to replicate the discovery experience of scrolling on Instagram.

“We’re thinking about how we go from being a transactional to an inspirational platform,” Laura Jones, Instacart’s chief marketing officer, told Advertising Age.

“Moving from transactional to inspirational is a noble idea and incredibly hard to pull off, but with Instacart’s cash and creativity, they could do it,” wrote David Spear, senior partner, industry consulting, retail, CPG and hospitality at TeradataTDC
.

Others on RetailWire’s BrainTrust likewise saw potential for the shift alongside potential hurdles.

“Compelling content that is continually changing and personalized can definitely catch consumers attention,” wrote Patricia Vekich Waldron, CEO of Vision First. “The challenge for Instacart is whether their retail partners will continue to outsource the direct customer touch-point to them.”

Daniel Danker, Instacart’s chief product officer, believes that, while in-store browsing traditionally drives grocery discovery, online shopping holds the advantage of being able to showcase new items each time a customer opens their app and personalized feeds. He told Quartz, “If we can bring that joy of discovery that happens in the real world, if you will, today, and join it with a personalized experience, we’re actually able to do something very different than what has been done so far.”

Outside the app, to help drive direct traffic to its site, Instacart launched Instacart Tastemakers, an affiliate network that allows creators and publishers to monetize their content through links to the platform from recipes on TikTok and online publications. The Wall Street Journal reported that accelerated growth in the second quarter has the delivery platform aiming to complete its initial public offering this year.

But not everyone on the BrainTrust was bullish on Instacart’s shift into “inspirational” territory.

“Why does Instacart seek to slow down their purchasing platform for the user rather than provide acceleration and guidance to decrease transactional shopping time?” wrote Kai Clarke, CEO of American Retail Consultants. “When consumers are in the store, they are confronted by multiple brands, messaging, and on-shelf promotions already. Trying to add to this confusing messaging with their own shopping messaging will only add to more messaging noise in an already crowded space.”