French people are still ashamed of using delivery services, but in the same time struggle to handle everything in their daily lives. We installed a communication strategy to work towards social acceptability of using delivery services, but in a funny way: letting know to French that we know that sometimes, they use Uber Eats, even if they are ashamed of it, with the campaign ‘ça arrive’ / It happens. Also, with Uber Eats, it is now possible to have almost anything delivered: to order food and non-food groceries. With notifications on smartphones, the brand reminded it a few times, but French people still don’t know about this new offer. Then, how to make most of French people aware of it? And how to show Uber Eats’s delivery offer depth?

September 18th

We hacked TV ad-break on the biggest French national TV channel TF1 in prime time right before the big Sunday evening Marvel Movie. It’s with these same notifications, used to push infos about new offers on the app, that Uber Eats decided to reach out to all French people during prime time. But during other brands ads: Oasis, Carte Noire, Burger King, Extrême, Free, Celio… So many products that the brand delivers (or not) thanks to its app. Because we know that if it happens to pop up in front of an ad, you’ll know that Uber Eats is there to deliver to your home, dinners, groceries, coffee, ice cream and so many other things. With humor and lightness, these notifications have highlighted as many products that the brand delivers (or not) through its application, because we know that it happens to crack in front of a commercial.

Today, Uber Eats services are available to more than 70% of the French population, making the target audience of the brand very large: all French people living in big, medium and small cities. In order to reach out this large target audience, we decided to hack an ad-break at a key moment gathering a big audience: Sunday’s evening film on TF1, first French TV channel. For years, it has been a major prime time, where more than 20% of audiences are in front of TF1. We also chose a Sunday where a big movie was broadcasted: a Marvel movie, movies breaking box office every year in France, and chose the ad-break just before the film, maximizing audience. We reach out brands’ that are popular among French (Burger King, Oasis, Free) to join the ad-break to hack them, with the Uber Eats brand ton of voice : humor, complicity, delivery exculpation.

We hacked an ad-break on the Sunday’s evening film on the first French TV channel TF1 on a September 18th, during prime time on Sunday evening. We used notifications and phone vibring sound design over more than 3minutes of ads, to catch attention, turning this phone feature into a TV feature. We asked to brands French people love (Burger King, etc) to join the ad break. We hacked and reacted with humor to every single ad in the it, ending with our campaign spot and a reveal of the hack: these are brands and product you can (almost) get delivered with the Uber Eats App. A promo code was hidden in notifications. Besides, in a Twitter thread, we organized right after the ad-break, a conversation between all these brands, to make people that weren’t in front of TV aware of this hack, where brands were looking for an explanation.

3.2 million people were in front of their TV and are now aware of the whole Uber Eats offer. With this operation, we put the light on the brand and generated many conversations around the brand. Uber Eats has been Top Tweet in France during the evening, with a positive sentiment that increase by 17%. +500k reach of UGC on the hack on Twitter. People searched 400% more than usual the brand on Google. +20 medias talked about it in PR, and influencers also with earned content.

Besides conversations, it has especially driven business impact for the brand. It doubled downloads compared to a regular day, with +15000 more users, with only a 3 minutes ad-break hack. There was +27% connections on the app. It led to +2.6% growth in orders. And more than 1600 people used the promo code hidden in one notification on the Free brands’ spot.