Social listening is delivering some wonderful campaigns. Instacart’s is the latest and it also taps into the micro-drama format trending in branded content. The brand has played into the (unkind and sexist, but whatever…) male shopper memes.

“The vast majority of the time, Instacart shoppers absolutely nail it. But occasionally there are, shall we say… mishaps?,” Instacart wrote on the campaign blog.

“Yes, we’ve seen the memes about male shoppers. And yes, some of those substitutions were, well, bananas. Turkey dog food for turkey jerky? Cotton swabs for tampons? Thankfully, those moments are the rare exception, not the rule, and shoppers – including male shoppers! – do an incredible job for their customers. But a few bad apples can spoil the bunch… and create a lot of buzz.”

Instacart’s The Male Shopper Project stars Antoni Porowski from Queer Eye and Hannah Berner from Giggly Squad in a mock training program for hopeless male shoppers to bump Instacart’s 90% perfect delivery rating to 100%. The campaign aims to quash the stereotype that male shoppers are incompetent.

The blog is also a platform testifying to Instacart shopping excellence (in great detail), including “more than 100 million five-star ratings in 2025” and “over 90% of rated orders earn a perfect customer score”. It also describes (again in great detail) the systems that keep Instacart shoppers’ performance high as well as the company’s Grocery Quality Controls for customer shopping confidence.