Uber Eats was in a competitive share battle with DoorDash, a company who had consistently and effectively focused the delivery conversation on food selection–the range of restaurants and the breadth of tastes.

In order to drive switching we knew we would need to find a different conversation to engage users on, and in addition to selection one of the top drivers of consumer preference is reliability–after all no one likes cold tacos.

So in a world where late was increasingly the norm, and where patience for lateness was distinctly on the wane, we chose to go where no delivery app had dared to go before and own something that no one else wanted to touch with a 10 foot pole: reliability.

To bring to life the rarity of the “5% of occasions” when we were not on time, it was important to get across quite how extraordinary those instances were. They were very irregular circumstances, and so our stories needed to capture that irregularity too. And that is where the fun began–

Enter out of the ordinary, entertaining shenanigans–like an inflatable Minion rolling off the top of a building, or Aaron Donald helping a very sweet but very slow grandmother cross the street, or OBJ leaving a restaurant with the shiniest bling anyone has ever been blinded by–and we started to show how rare our late deliveries really were. This approach not only highlighted how extraordinary our lateness was likely to be, but also created clear empathy for our couriers–lateness was not in their hands.