Uber Eats is known for breaking the rules of traditional advertising, using the ‘Tonight’ I’ll be eating…’ campaign to build an entertainment brand that embeds itself in culture. A key moment is through the annual Australian Open (AO) Tennis partnership. With 1-in-2 Aussies tuning in to watch, it’s a chance for the brand to be part of this tentpole sporting moment.

Yet with 27 major sponsors of the AO (more than any other Grand Slam) and logos plastered everywhere, it’s tough to cut through, particularly as Uber Eats is only a mid-tier sponsor, with broadcast-only inclusions. Despite this - Uber Eats set the ambitious goal of achieving brand fame by ‘owning the game’ across the two-week tournament.

That wasn’t all though. Unlike previous years, Uber Eats wanted to use this as a key sales-driving moment too, by integrating a cross-platform promotion that would drive orders for our major restaurant partners.

We created a way for Uber Eats to own a moment in every single game without a logo in sight.

We introduced an integrated second screen activation that was entirely responsive to the live Australian Open score.

And it was simple. When the Tennis score was LOVE (0), Aussies could eat for the price of LOVE ($0) on Uber Eats. All they had to do was stay glued to the Uber Eats Instagram channel, where the real-time promo codes were dropped.

Our idea was designed to infiltrate the Australian open, so we partnered with the master of subterfuge himself, Sacha Baron Cohen, to amplify the activation. With Sacha, we co-created his first-ever character for a brand - Robbo the Rogue Umpire, who was obsessed with keeping the score in every match at LOVE.

The promo mechanic itself needed to be innovative enough to generate the fame we were after, whilst maintaining people's attention throughout the entire two-weeks with promotions that changed daily. That meant looking beyond just the TV inclusions in our package, and instead using these to direct people to social media, tapping into second-screen behaviour.

The ephemeral nature of Instagram Stories meant we could instantly post unique promo-codes every time LOVE was on the scoreboard. And when LOVE disappeared (sometimes seconds later), the codes could too.

A three-tiered communications strategy created an ecosystem that directed people to our Instagram channel.

Announce - Build awareness and hype around the campaign (always on TV, on-screen billboards, OOH, OLV, social)

Explain - Show what today’s deal is, and how to take part (updated nightly - TV, OLV, radio, social)

Engage - Drop promo codes in real-time when the score is love (Instagram stories).

Executing the campaign took a monumental effort. In total, it involved…

1 tennis tournament.

3 live simulations run in the lead-up to de-risk every stage of the customer journey.

5 restaurant partners included in the campaign (McDonalds, Hungry Jacks, Ben & Jerry’s, Dominos, Subway)

14 days of the tournament, with 14 different promos - one for each day.

14 very late nights, with a 6-strong team of community managers and content creators working round the clock to drop codes, new content and trouble-shoot in real-time.

18 different TV ads run, some of which changed every day to announce the new promo.

1,820 unique, time-bound promotions dropped via Instagram Stories content throughout the tournament.

2,300 pieces of social content created in total.

Our real-time AO promo campaign helped serve up a raft of impressive results for ours and our partners’ businesses across the 14 day campaign period, helping us achieve both the brand fame and sales uplift the brief had asked for.

Brand fame

17 million earned media impressions

+35% increase in instagram followers, allowing us to overtake Hungry Jack’s fan base

• Impact (sales)

4,000 acquisitions to our co-marketing partners on Uber Eats

Over 100,000 code applications

+8.5% increase in total orders over the two weeks

+70% increase in Ben & Jerry’s orders compared to the week prior.