Uber Eats launched in Hong Kong in 2016, but without much marketing support, it hasn’t fulfilled its growth potential. Even after 4 years since launch, awareness of the Uber Eats’ brand was only 37%. Despite the category growing exponentially due to covid in 2020, we weren’t getting a slice of the pie vs competitors who were ramping up brand spend. By early 2021, restaurants began dropping off the platform. We had to act fast to reverse the trend, but with a tight budget.

Our brief: Launch Uber Eats Hong Kong’s biggest-ever brand campaign, ideally using the global creative platform - Tonight, I’ll be Eating…

Objectives:

Improve restaurant partner satisfaction so they feel it’s worthwhile being on the app (prevent churn).

Drive up brand awareness by at least 3 points (consumer).

Close the gap on the closest competitor in terms of acquisitions and app downloads.

Celebrities usually get paid (lots) to sell products… even if they never actually use them in real life. Meanwhile, small businesses - like most restaurants on the Uber Eats app - don’t have the budget for influencer star power.

So in a world-first for the Tonight, I’ll be eating… campaign, we flipped the traditional influencer endorsement model on its head, providing thousands of small local restaurants the star power that is usually reserved for big brands with big budgets.

Partnering with Hong Kong’s much-loved comedic duo, Joyce Cheng and Alfred Hui, we launched the #MakeLocalFamous initiative to lend their support to thousands of local restaurants. Playing into their characters, Joyce and Alfred parodied the usual influencer marketing tropes - claiming every single restaurant was their personal favourite, creating tongue-in-cheek restaurant recommendations on social media, wearing logo-plastered jackets, holding over-the-top press conferences and providing customisable advertising materials to local restaurants.

Hongkongese culture is under pressure right now, and so locals are fiercely protective of what makes it unique and vibrant. Research revealed that food is a huge part of this cultural distinctiveness, with its collision of West and East, old and new, hawker street stalls and Michelin-starred restaurants. And it’s local mom and pop shops that form the lively, creative and sociable beating heart of it all.

Yet these local restaurants have no chance competing against international brands, the likes of which Uber Eats’ competitors were spending big on supporting with their co-marketing efforts. This gave Uber Eats an opportunity for clear differentiation, as well as to take a stand on something culturally important, by celebrating and supporting all the local businesses that make Hong Kong’s food culture unique.

This inspired the strategic proposition: Uber Eats wants to support every single local restaurant.

The campaign consisted of two phases, each of which had an integrated mix of b2b restaurant-facing communications, as well as consumer:

Phase One

Consumer: Seed the idea through 'surprise celebrity restaurant reviews' posted by Joyce and Alfred across social and popular sites like TimeOut and Tripadvisor.

Restaurant: Recruit local restaurants on the Uber Eats app to be part of the campaign through direct, CRM and social channels.

Phase Two

Consumer: launch the integrated campaign across TV, online video, OOH, radio and social, including a tongue-in-cheek press conference, also virtually streamed on Joyce & Alfred's own channels.

Restaurant: distribute bespoke partner packs to participating local restaurants, containing templated marketing materials (point-of-sale, social content, CRM) that they could customise, directly adding the star power of Joyce and Alfred to their own marketing efforts.

The campaign ran nationally across Hong Kong, between July-September, with a budget smaller than category competitors.

The campaign far exceeded expectations (and targets).

Over 1,000 local restaurants participated, delivering increased partner brand satisfaction and sizeable business impact, including:

+23% additional revenue

+34% total deliveries

+82% acquisitions

+40% quarterly app downloads

+3% share in app downloads, surpassing the closest competitor for the first time.

Despite a cluttered competitive environment, where we were out-spent in terms of share of voice, the creative cut through to deliver unprecedented brand metric gains:

+5% uplift in Top of Mind awareness

+4% uplift in Consideration

+2% uplift in Trial

And we had some very happy clients!

“A herculean challenge to take on an incredibly ambitious brief in Hong Kong and deliver one of our most impactful programs of 2021.” Lucinda Barlow, Head of Marketing, APAC

"Paring the strongest local insight with phenomenal creativity has delivered results far beyond expectations." Ally Doube, Strategy Lead, APAC