On the Spot: Corona & Uber Eats

Summary

Podcast Summary: On the Spot: Corona & Uber Eats
On Strategy Showcase
Host: Fergus O’Carroll
Release Date: July 13, 2025

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Introduction

In the July 13, 2025 episode of On Strategy Showcase, host Fergus O’Carroll delves into the strategic storytelling behind two prominent brands: Uber Eats and Corona. Joined by a panel of marketing experts—Rachel Poole (Head of Strategy, Ogilvy New York), Julian Morgan (Head of Strategy, Rethink Toronto), Vanessa Chin, and Matthew Herbert—the episode explores the evolution, branding strategies, and comparative performance of these industry leaders.

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Guest Introductions

The episode kicks off with Fergus welcoming his guests:

• Rachel Poole from Ogilvy New York
• Julian Morgan from Rethink Toronto
• Vanessa Chin and Matthew Herbert, both returning guests

Fergus O’Rourke [00:00]:
"Welcome to the latest episode of On the Spot, where planners talk about brands they've never worked on..."

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Uber Eats: Strategy and Branding

Evolution of Campaigns

The discussion begins with Uber Eats, highlighting its significant growth and strategic advertising phases since 2017.

Julian Morgan [06:08]:
"Uber has done a masterful job of embedding themselves in culture through their offerings, always weaving in some celebrity and cultural elements to elevate their brand beyond mere functionality."

Fergus O'Rourke [09:27]:
"Uber Eats seems to be everywhere in my mind, unlike DoorDash, which feels less omnipresent in advertising..."

Celebrity Endorsements and Fluency

The panel examines the role of celebrities in Uber Eats’ campaigns, noting how celebrities are seamlessly integrated to enhance the brand narrative rather than overshadowing it.

Rachel Poole [07:04]:
"They've created distinctive brand assets or fluent devices, particularly the Doorbell, and the bag, ensuring these elements are consistently used to reinforce brand recognition."

Julian Morgan [12:32]:
"Uber doesn't just plaster a celebrity next to their logo. They utilize celebrities as integral parts of the narrative, making the ads memorable and effective."

System One Analysis

Vanessa Chin provides insights from System One’s research, emphasizing Uber Eats’ strong performance in emotional response and brand recall.

Vanessa Chin [22:50]:
"This campaign has a big idea that works with or without a celebrity. Introducing a celebrity authentically playing a beloved role results in strong positive emotions."

Matthew Herbert [23:23]:
"Brands should focus on the story first, then pair it with the right celebrity. Uber Eats exemplifies this by choosing celebrities that enhance their narrative rather than distract from it."

Super Bowl Campaign

A standout discussion revolves around Uber Eats’ Super Bowl campaign featuring Matthew McConaughey, praised for its humor and relatability.

Julian Morgan [19:32]:
"The idea is so good on its own that the celebrity simply elevates it. It's one of the few brands where celebrity endorsements don’t make me cringe."

Vanessa Chin [24:35]:
"The humor in the campaign successfully elicited strong emotional responses, outperforming category averages significantly."

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Corona: Timeless Branding and Modern Challenges

Historical Branding Success

The panel shifts focus to Corona, applauding its long-standing branding strategy centered around relaxation and the beach lifestyle.

Julian Morgan [26:02]:
"Corona has consistently nailed their branding with simplicity and restraint, avoiding typical beer advertising tropes and instead focusing on serene, beach-centric imagery."

Rachel Poole [27:07]:
"Corona’s approach echoes brands like Guinness, utilizing distinctive assets and maintaining a clean, consistent message over decades."

Recent Campaign Critique

However, recent efforts by Corona to modernize their branding with celebrities like Snoop Dogg and Pedro Pascal have received mixed reviews.

Julian Morgan [30:58]:
"The new celebrity-focused campaigns feel like they're dragging the brand into pop culture without a solid narrative, unlike Uber Eats’ strategic use of celebrities."

Rachel Poole [32:58]:
"Corona is grappling with evolving from a physical beach representation to an intangible emotional state, but it still feels aspirational rather than achievable for the average consumer."

System One Analysis

Vanessa Chin highlights Corona’s strong brand metrics but points out areas for improvement in storytelling and emotional engagement.

Vanessa Chin [35:15]:
"Corona consistently outperforms category averages in brand health metrics, scoring high in recall and consideration. However, enhancing storytelling could elevate emotional connections further."

Matthew Herbert [39:18]:
"Corona maintains strong funnel metrics with 80% awareness and 47% consideration. Yet, to stay ahead, they need to innovate beyond their traditional 'beach' imagery."

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Comparative Insights and Strategic Recommendations

Category Growth vs. Market Share

The panel discusses whether Uber Eats and Corona should focus on growing their respective categories or on stealing market share from competitors.

Rachel Poole [15:39]:
"Uber Eats leverages its existing Uber user base to convert them into Eats customers, a unique advantage DoorDash doesn’t possess."

Matthew Herbert [16:44]:
"With DoorDash holding 31% preference and Uber Eats at 19%, the growing category allows Uber Eats to expand its absolute numbers even if its market share percentage remains flat."

Strategic Recommendations

The experts propose that Corona needs to innovate its branding strategy to remain relevant, while Uber Eats should continue leveraging its strong storytelling and celebrity integrations.

Julian Morgan [42:14]:
"Corona should reinvent its long-standing beach narrative to align with modern cultural shifts, ensuring it resonates with today’s diverse consumer base."

Rachel Poole [41:03]:
"Uber Eats has been incredibly current and reflective of the times, a strength they should continue to build upon, whereas Corona needs to rejuvenate its approach for 2025 and beyond."

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Conclusion

The episode concludes with the panel acknowledging the strengths and areas for growth for both Uber Eats and Corona. Uber Eats is lauded for its dynamic and strategic use of storytelling and celebrities, while Corona is encouraged to evolve its timeless branding to stay relevant in a changing market landscape.

Fergus O’Rourke [44:45]:
"It is great to have everybody here on the show. Thank you to Rachel Poole, Julian Morgan, Vanessa Chin, and Matthew Herbert. We look forward to exploring more creative work in our future episodes."

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Notable Quotes:

• Julian Morgan [06:08]:
  "Uber has done a masterful job of embedding themselves in culture through their offerings..."

• Rachel Poole [07:04]:
  "They've created distinctive brand assets or fluent devices, particularly the Doorbell..."

• Vanessa Chin [22:50]:
  "Introducing a celebrity authentically playing a beloved role results in strong positive emotions."

• Julian Morgan [26:02]:
  "Corona has consistently nailed their branding with simplicity and restraint..."

• Matthew Herbert [39:18]:
  "Corona maintains strong funnel metrics with 80% awareness and 47% consideration."

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This comprehensive discussion provides valuable insights into how strategic storytelling and consistent branding can propel brands like Uber Eats and Corona to prominence, while also highlighting the necessity for continual innovation to maintain market relevance.

Transcript

[Fergus O'Rourke]

Welcome to the latest episode of on the Spot, where planners talk about brands they've never worked on. I almost think sometimes I need to change that title to be where marketers talk about brands they've never worked on because I feel like I'm cheating, you guys. We're not all planners, but it just sounds good and it's always stuck with me, that planner. So maybe it's marketers, but we can. We can figure that out another time. Great to have everybody back. We have two guests this week in our rotating panel of misfits. We have Rachel Poole, head of strategy in Ogilvy, New York. Rachel, welcome.

[Rachel Poole]

Thank you. Pleasure to be here.

[Fergus O'Rourke]

And we have Julian Morgan is head of strategy at Rethink in Toronto. And for those of you not watching on YouTube, you can't see that sort of iconic fake turf Astroturf that is the big. Is a massive presence in your Toronto office, Julian.

[Julian Morgan]

That's right. Yeah. I'll save the lore and story behind that for another time. But, yeah, pleasure to be here.

[Fergus O'Rourke]

Like, your entire backdrop is like. It's like you're lying on the ground at a putt. Putt golf place.

[Julian Morgan]

Yeah, exactly. Exactly. Yeah. There's turf everywhere.

[Fergus O'Rourke]

Yeah, there's turf everywhere. And Vanessa Chin and Matthew Herbert are back again. Great to see you guys.

[Vanessa Chin]

You too. And it's flattery to call me a planner, so.

[Fergus O'Rourke]

Oh, you see, There you go. Right, Right. You have the head of a planner, the mind, meaning not the head head, but the actual mind.

[Matthew Herbert]

Nice to see. I'll take. I'll take armchair critic.

[Fergus O'Rourke]

Armchair. All right, that could be a show.

[Matthew Herbert]

Nice to see you both. Vanessa. We. We had some. We had a good time spending time together a couple weeks ago in can. And we did Rachel, a fellow New Zealander. So for everybody listening, if you can't understand accents, that's where it's from. It's not Australian.

[Fergus O'Rourke]

So how. How was. Can. Did Rachel or Julian. Were you guys in can?

[Rachel Poole]

I was not, no.

[Julian Morgan]

Yeah, not this year. Not this year.

[Vanessa Chin]

No.

[Fergus O'Rourke]

Nor was I. I think it was only. I think it was only the elites. How was it, Matthew?

[Matthew Herbert]

I mean, it was a. It was another. It was another great year down there. It was. I mean, it was 30 degrees on the French Riviera, but it was also 30 degrees in London. So it took some of the shine off, you know, telling that. Telling the team. I think one of my favorite. One of my favorite talks, though, who I saw was. Was Laura Jones, the. The CMO at Instacart.

[Fergus O'Rourke]

Yeah.

[Matthew Herbert]

I think what Laura talks about over the last three years, how they've transformed that business from kind of performance to the brand platform to the creative platform, launching super bowl ads. I thought that's, that's a story that more, more brands and agencies need to hear about a turnaround in three years. So, yeah, it's brilliant.

[Fergus O'Rourke]

So how about you, Vanessa? Did. Was it, was it fun for System One? You guys were everywhere. It was like pink, pink everywhere.

[Vanessa Chin]

I love to hear that. We had three massive pieces of research launching, most notably our research with TikTok. So it was a really, really busy week and very, very hot, and everyone was exhausted. But we're riding that wave afterwards.

[Fergus O'Rourke]

Yeah, I think I'm going to try to get there next year because I want to do something like big with a brand. I don't want to be in the hallways. So I'm either going to do something big with the Effies because we're the official podcast partner of the Effies. So hopefully next year we'll do something it can or if not, we'll do something with some brands. But I keep getting pressured to go there. So I think I have to give in and go. Although I hate to support.

[Vanessa Chin]

We're here to support. We're here to support Fergus.

[Fergus O'Rourke]

And thank you very much. I hate trade shows coming up. As a strategist in the industry, I hated when we had to go to a trade show for a client because I'm a person who wants to go and do what I want to do and then leave and never return again. I hide in my room and that doesn't really work well. I think, Julian, that's maybe that's a characteristic of planners.

[Julian Morgan]

Yeah, I, I, that, that hits home with me, that's for sure. And can is like, that's unavoidable, my friend. Like you're, you're in it for a week long of. It feels like Groundhog Day of the same thing over and over and over again.

[Matthew Herbert]

I mean, if we're all, if we're all kidding, if we're all hitting to can next year, can I make a request that there's such, there's such a big opportunity to be way more weird. There's not enough weirdness and there's not enough creativity actually at the festival.

[Julian Morgan]

I agree with that.

[Matthew Herbert]

And so I think let's put that on our shoulders. We turn up next year just with a little bit of weirdness.

[Julian Morgan]

Yeah.

[Vanessa Chin]

I mean, I didn't see anyone else nighttime swimming, so there's an opportunity.

[Matthew Herbert]

I don't know if that's that's the type of weird I was going for.

[Fergus O'Rourke]

Is that, is that anyone else mean beyond you, Vanessa? Were you nighttime swimming?

[Julian Morgan]

Exactly.

[Vanessa Chin]

I was safely on the beach watching others, yeah.

[Fergus O'Rourke]

All right, so we are going to talk about two brands today. Our first one is Uber Eats. And there's a lot of fascinating things about Uber Eats and it's a very interesting category that touches on a number of different brands, including Instacart, which you just talked about, Matthew. So the work, we've had them on the show a couple of times. We actually just have an episode released this week that we just referred to earlier in our conversation. I'd encourage people to go check that out. I love the work. Special Group has grown as an agency with Uber over time and then with Uber Eats. And it's important to kind of remember that Uber, Uber built a brand without any advertising. I mean, it scaled up massively as a ride sharing business and did not start advertising in any meaningful way until Uber Eats. But it started in Australia where they began to do the advertising. And that's. So you see Georgie Jeffries, you see Tom Martin, you see the Special Group, they sort of came out of that part of the world and that work then went international to many multiple different countries. There's been a number of different phases to the work which we'll get into, but I thought we could start off Julian, and just sort of talk about your impression of the work because it's had many phases. It started in 2017 with Tonight I'll be Eating, moved on then to which was really about the food delivery part of Uber Eats. Then it evolved into the grocery and a whole new push around 20, 20, 21 maybe. What's your thought on that work?

[Julian Morgan]

I think the thing that I applaud Uber for doing is, is really trying to kind of embed themselves in culture through what they're offering. So like, everything that they kind of did, they always tried to like weave in some celebrity and some kind of cultural thing so that they weren't just kind of, you know, selling the function of their product. They always seem to like, find a way to like kind of elevate it and, you know, talk about things in a bigger way. So I always, I thought that was interesting. Like if you look at all their work, it's never Uber first, it's always something else first, Uber second.

[Fergus O'Rourke]

But you know the interesting thing about that though? That's, that's probably true, except for the fact that they use those brand assets immediately out of the gate. I mean, that, that Iconic bag, Rachel. That's sort of like. It's sort of. They understand how to brand well without forcing me to want to get the hell away when I see that bag. In other words, to reject the ad.

[Rachel Poole]

That's right. I mean, I think that they've done. It's kind of a masterclass in creating distinctive brand assets or fluent devices.

[Vanessa Chin]

Right.

[Rachel Poole]

Particularly when it's an intangible thing outside of it being a platform that sits on your device. Like, they've really had to kind of manufacture those assets and repeat them over time to make sure that they land. And the doorbell is so brilliant for that. I think that the bag, to your point, like, they've really done a beautiful job in establishing and repeating over and over and over again those assets to land. And Vanessa, I'm sure we'll talk about fluency and how well they score on that.

[Fergus O'Rourke]

You know, the one thing that's interesting though, Rachel, is I gotta imagine Orlando would be. Would be right now going, wow, man. I have popularized the term fluent devices, Rachel.

[Rachel Poole]

Yes, I know. I'm sure they're incredibly thrilled.

[Fergus O'Rourke]

I mean, Jesus, we are all espousing this language. This show is having major influence on our advertising company.

[Rachel Poole]

Welcome, Orlando.

[Vanessa Chin]

Yeah, shout out to Orlando. He's the best. You know, fluent devices take time. So, you know, when you're looking at comparing something like Uber Eats to someone like KitKat or other brands that have been, you know, using the same fluent devices for 20 years, 30, 40, 100, there's going to be a. There's going to be a difference. So, you know, for the app category, fluency is very, very low. You know, it's. It's average at best. Where the beer category has. Which we'll talk about later, has a really high average for fluency. Uber Eats, it's only been a couple years. You need at least three years of really reusing and aggressively using these fluent devices to actually get that traction. So the work from a fluency standpoint is, okay, it ranks in like the 70s and 80s out of 100. Where other brands you might see right out of the gate, you know, in the 90s.

[Fergus O'Rourke]

So fluency being the recall of the brand at the end of the recall of the brand.

[Vanessa Chin]

Yeah.

[Fergus O'Rourke]

Okay, we'll be right back. Are celebrities the secret sauce to add effectiveness? What about music or brand characters? You can predict and improve advertising's commercial impact with System 1's test yout ad Platform. Test yout Add is the creative effectiveness platform that measures consumers emotional responses, predicting the sales and growth impacts of advertising. You can test creative for linear and connected tv, digital, outdoor, audio, and print channels from early concepts through to finished film plus access. System One's Test yout Ad Premium platform. With more than 150,000 ads in the database, you get the most accurate view of your category with results and rankings updated daily. So create with confidence. To learn more, visit system1group.com that's system1group.com now back to the show. I don't recall many ads from DoorDash, but I can recall a ton of ads from UberEats and DoorDash in the U.S. i think it's North America or the U.S. i'm not sure if it's both. It is the dominant leader. Like, 67% of share goes to DoorDash, 23% for Uber Eats in food delivery. But I recall Uber, Uber Eats. The work just seems to be everywhere in my mind at least.

[Julian Morgan]

Well, to me, that's the thing. Like, it's like, I feel like I remember a lot of the Uber Eats work because of the celebrity. And I think that this is like a. The celebrity is such a. An easy lever for brands to pull. And in a lot of ways, I feel like it's just more of a flex of your budget than it is of your strategy. But I think that Uber's done a good job of, like, leveraging celebrity to the point where we kind of expect it. Like, in every Uber Eats ad, I expect to see some kind of celebrity thing. And it's almost. Again, I don't know if they're doing this on purpose, but it's like, it's reminiscent of, like, the McDonald's, like, famous orders, but it's got an element of like, they're just like us to. To it. And I don't know if that's intentional, but it's.

[Fergus O'Rourke]

It.

[Julian Morgan]

It comes through to me and I think it makes it very memorable. Like, I just. I know a bunch of Uber Eats ads. I'm like, you. I can't name a single DoorDash ad other than maybe they're bigger, like, splashier pieces.

[Rachel Poole]

There's such a consistent line through all of that work. Like, it's. It's interesting because I was in. Living in Australia during the early days of tonight. I'll be eating right. And then now being in the U.S. i feel like I've traveled, you know, work has also traveled. And the work now, it's still. It doesn't feel a thousand degrees off from where they started with tonight I'll be eating. And Julian, like, you're talking about the use of celebrity, like whether that was Kim Kardashian and Kath and Kim in the early days. Tonight I'll be eating pulled pork fajitas with extra jalapenos. Hey, Kim, what are you going to have?

[Fergus O'Rourke]

Tonight I'll be eating spag bowl and cheesy garlic bread. Ooh, ta.

[Vanessa Chin]

Thank you.

[Rachel Poole]

Hey, Kim, you're an entrepreneur. One word pitch.

[Fergus O'Rourke]

Netball. Evening wear.

[Rachel Poole]

Ya.

[Fergus O'Rourke]

Nah.

[Rachel Poole]

A lot of money in netball, I reckon.

[Fergus O'Rourke]

What even is netball?

[Rachel Poole]

It's a really smart use of celebrity. I think that there is. There's a fine line between just plastering your logo next to a celebrity and actually utilizing that celebrity and using them as a building block of whatever narrative you're putting forward. And I think they do a really good job of that.

[Julian Morgan]

To me, I always hate when celebrity is the idea. Like when I see an ad and I'm like, oh, the celebrity is just the idea. They don't actually have an idea. Uber's really good at having an idea and that idea is good on its own and the celebrity just makes it better. And that is, to me, like, that's the most powerful way to use celebrity. They do a great job of that.

[Fergus O'Rourke]

So, Matthew, what about for Tracksuit? Because, I mean, I don't know whether it's true regarding Doordash and Uber Eats. In my mind, they're ubiquitous. Uber Eats, I don't feel I see Doordash.

[Matthew Herbert]

Well, well, well, here we come. Fergus, there has been, over the last 12 months, there's been another 18 million adults into the meal delivery category. There's 166 million adults right now in the US who are active in the category. So it's growing category.

[Fergus O'Rourke]

Yeah.

[Matthew Herbert]

Within that is interesting to look at is most people in the category have five brands they're aware of. So that might be Door Dash, Uber Eats, Instacart, GrubHub. But only three brands get considered. And so the job for these brands in the category is like, you've got to get in the consideration set and Uber Eats is a strong seconds behind door dash. Like DoorDash, Uber Eats are the two.

[Fergus O'Rourke]

I wonder what the dynamic is in the category, because for me, I'm thinking, okay, I've got Uber app on my phone. I've used it as a shopper, as a user of delivery food delivery apps. Am I jumping around from app to app or am I sticking to the same app? In other words, can they really sort of steal Share Rachel from Doordash, or is it to Matt's point, it's sort of it's the idea of you've got to grow the category because, because DoorDash started in a very different part of the segment segment of the market. They started in suburban markets, that's why they became so big so fast. Uber was concentrated in the, in the cities, those more dense urban city areas. So they were able to get along much faster, grow much faster. So I wonder now is it about category growth or is it about stealing share?

[Rachel Poole]

I mean the easier job to be done is going to be to take the lion's share of the organic growth that's coming into the category, right? That rather than trying to steal it from the ingrained player, particularly in those non big city markets like you were talking about. Fergus, I think as well it, it's interesting the interplay between Uber Eats and Uber like they, they do, they have a lot of tactics within both apps to try and get you to cross shop between both. I was actually in an Uber yesterday and ordered Uber Eats so that it would be at home when I got home out my Uber. And they, they have their unique kind of advantage to be able to do that, right convert Uber customers into Uber Eats customers, which is something that DoorDash doesn't necessarily have in that kind of one to one comparison. So I think that's also an interesting strategy for them. I'm not sure if Uber, you know what Uber's numbers look like in those markets where DoorDash is the majority, but that's also an interesting strategy for them to employ.

[Matthew Herbert]

I'll bring some context into that. So in terms of the most preferred, the most preferred apps in terms of meal delivery, Door dash in the US is 31%. Uber Eats is at 19%. So in terms of the most preferred apps, DoorDash has actually seen a 3 percentage point decline over the last 12 months and Uber is holding flat now in a growing category. The interesting thing is, and this is a nuance in brand tracking, we often talk about percentages of consideration or preference because the category is growing. The number of actual people for DoorDash and Uber is growing. So the percentages are flat or going down but the total category is up. So the total amount of people actually preferring and considering and Uber seeing stronger growth in total numbers of people, which.

[Fergus O'Rourke]

Is so if people prefer to that point, Matthew, if people prefer only 30 odd percent of people prefer DoorDash but they have 67% market share, that implies that users are using multiple apps, does it not?

[Matthew Herbert]

Totally. So if we look at claims usage, DoorDash has 60% claims usage currently, and Uber Eats has 47%. And so while people might be switching around, people look like they're using DoorDash more, but more people are coming into the Uber Eats funnel.

[Fergus O'Rourke]

And maybe it's. Maybe there's a different offering on each of those apps. I'm not the one in my household that generally orders the food on the apps, so I don't know if there's. I know there's some exclusive agreements with DoorDash that Uber eats does not have access to. So maybe it's like the product offering is distinct.

[Matthew Herbert]

How many other things.

[Vanessa Chin]

I think that's significant in terms of the growth in the US on how this. The logistics of how the businesses were built. You know, me and my background coming from the grocery retail category, there were specific partnerships. And the logistics and operations to get that up and running is still so new. When you think about how long it's been. It's only been a couple years, so I think, think we're still in the early stages of those partnerships. You know, grubhub and Amazon prime driving some of the adoption.

[Fergus O'Rourke]

Julian, let's talk about the super bowl work. So 2017 was tonight I'll Be Eating, but that campaign ran in 2017. And then for the introduction of the sort of grocery, it was Uber Don't Eats, which was that fantastic stuff. Gwyneth Paltrow, Jennifer Coolidge, Nick Brown, who's the. Whose cousin Greg on Succession, Trevor Noah, they were all involved in that. Wait, if it was delivered with Uber.

[Vanessa Chin]

Eats, does that mean I can eats it?

[Fergus O'Rourke]

Oh, no. Oh, no.

[Vanessa Chin]

It says eats.

[Matthew Herbert]

It's a diaper.

[Rachel Poole]

Oh, no. Oh, no.

[Fergus O'Rourke]

Next page. Bad. This candle tastes funny.

[Matthew Herbert]

Not bad, but funny.

[Julian Morgan]

And thanks to Uber Eats, we don't.

[Fergus O'Rourke]

Even know what food is anymore. This isn't food.

[Julian Morgan]

It's clear that they understand these celebrities and weave them into what they want the platform to say or what they need to do. And I think that that, to me, is one of the. They're one of the few brands that I don't cringe every time I see a celebrity ad. Every time I'm like, oh, no, that makes sense again, like, I tend to really like the ideas, even with their. Their. Their most recent super bowl work or NFL work, I guess it's just such a great idea. That idea is so good on its own, you know, that everything's a conspiracy to sell food. Like, to me, I'm like, that's fucking great. I would riff off that.

[Matthew Herbert]

Yeah. Yeah.

[Fergus O'Rourke]

It has been a banner year for the National Football League. Or should I call it the National Football League? From the very beginning, football has been a conspiracy to make us hungry. And we'll call this a pigskin. Make people crave bacon.

[Julian Morgan]

Bacon.

[Fergus O'Rourke]

Bacon. Everybody loves bacon. I love bacon. They do anything to sell food. Coach, how come we only play on Sundays? Because nobody's eating ice cream Saturdays, kid.

[Julian Morgan]

Geez.

[Fergus O'Rourke]

So the Packas were named after meat packers.

[Matthew Herbert]

So what should we call the fans?

[Fergus O'Rourke]

Co Cheese heads, of course. Why do you think Buffalo got a team?

[Matthew Herbert]

These Wings deserve a team.

[Fergus O'Rourke]

Yeah. Hey, figure out a good team name for Buffalo Bill.

[Matthew Herbert]

Buffalo.

[Fergus O'Rourke]

Buffalo. And their biggest game. Come on. Our championship will be a Super Cup. Can't eat out of a cup, Ted. But a bowl?

[Matthew Herbert]

How about a Super Bowl?

[Fergus O'Rourke]

And we'll start naming players after appliances. Hey, Coach, do I have to be called Refrigerator?

[Matthew Herbert]

Yes.

[Fergus O'Rourke]

And Peyton, he was a beef salesman. Omaha Steak. Omaha Steak. And they're still playing us this year. We're not even hiding it anymore. We have super bowl licks with a halftime show presented by an apple in a stadium named after a stallion.

[Julian Morgan]

I was wondering what that brief would have been, because it. The idea has a sense of, like, this has been in a creative's back pocket for a long time. Finally found the right opportunity. Like, it does have that. It's one of those, like, super simple ideas that was always there. And I was curious, like, would they have, like, you know, kind of fixed. Fixed it in that way or what? But I think it's great to hear that they. They launched it, it did well, and they kind of grabbed onto it and then ran with it.

[Vanessa Chin]

From a testing perspective, this campaign really is very, very strong. And one of the things that we love to do at System One, just something that we geek out on, is tracking does this celebrity ad help you perform better in terms of eliciting a strong emotional response? And on average, celebrities do not. I mean, they'll give you a slight uplift on emotional intensity, but not necessarily the positive emotions that you want for the brand. And so what. You know, it's been mentioned a few times that this campaign, it has a big idea, and you actually do it with or without a celebrity. And then when you introduce the celebrity who is authentically playing the role that they are loved for. So, you know, Matthew McConaughey obviously has been in a ton of films, but he personally loves football. He's played football. Coaches. You know, it's a little bit of a combination between, like, we are Marshall and the Lincoln Lawyer, you know, in terms of the role that he's playing, but it's so authentically him. And that's when we start to see really strong positive emotions for the work, for the campaign. And this particular campaign, I've been. I've loved it since it launched, and I've been testing it over time, and I retest it, and it continues actually to outperform itself. So each of the spots, 4.1, 4.2, and I will say, so this is general population. If you were to layer on a custom sample of either beer drinkers or football fans, it would be even higher. But this is general population of Everybody. And so 4.2 in a category of mobile apps, on average, score two. It's significantly higher.

[Matthew Herbert]

The takeaway here is what and what Julian and Vanessa are saying. It's like when a brand comes to an agency saying, we want to use celebrities, it's like, no, how do we get the. What's the story that we want to tell first? Like, what's the idea? What's the story? And then go and find the right people to elevate that. I think Vanessa, did you say that could have run without McConaughey? They could have had someone else that fits into this, the story. And it would have maybe not driven the exact same results, but it was the perfect pairing of, like, here's the story. Here's the story we want to tell, and then let's go and find the right celebrity. So any brands.

[Vanessa Chin]

So you love ideas that, like, change the way you see the world. Like, I. There are so many people who will now forever watch football, and every single time a player or a play or anything is food related, this will come up.

[Rachel Poole]

Yeah, that's right. That's. That's. I think what the best thing about this, that whole campaign is. I mean, sport and food, like you were saying, Fergus, that's been. There's been a connection between those two things as an occasion for a really long time. But I think that when you trying to own the occasion of watching sport, there's something so amazing about how the fact that they. They didn't just do an ad like an NFL ad. They made the NFL into an ad for Uber eats. You know, they. They created a system where every single game, every single moment, every single highlight reel within that season had the potential to be an ad reverberates.

[Vanessa Chin]

One thing we haven't mentioned is how good the humor is, and that's something that came up in the results. The verbatims. You know, humor doesn't always land, but when it does, it has such an effect on, you know, emotions and eliciting that emotional response. It was. It landed, and it succeeded for that.

[Julian Morgan]

Yeah, that. That's one of my favorite things. One of my favorite things about it is. And I'm happy you said, Vanessa, that it did well in the mainstream, because I think it's so hard to attack something like football and have it resonate beyond just, like, the core. And I think what they did was they found an idea that I didn't need to know anything about football. The idea explained itself, you know, really nicely, and it allowed me as, like, I'm not a football player fan at all, but I still got all the jokes. I still got all the references. It made complete sense. And to me, that's, like, such a hard thing to do is to, like, have an insight site that actually resonates beyond just the core demographic of that moment that the brand is tapping into for. Specifically for that reason.

[Rachel Poole]

Yeah.

[Fergus O'Rourke]

Let's talk about our next brand, Corona. We want to first talk about Corona from the context of how brilliantly it has been positioned over the decades. So let's first start, Julian, with. With the work for Corona. So Corona started out in the 80s. Miles away from ordinary, was the tagline back then. It was super brilliant, especially in a category that was full of people that were just using humor and slapstick and. And masculinity to the max. Right. In the beer category, it was like. That was, like, the light went on, and there was this completely different way of marketing beer as an. As an imported Mexican beer. Well, tell us about your thoughts on. On the Corona work.

[Julian Morgan]

Yeah, I mean, first of all, I think it's like, we talked about Uber being a masterclass of distinctive brand assets and fluency and all those things, but I think Corona has, like, really, truly nailed that, and it's consistently done that over the years. I think, like, my favorite thing about the work is that you never see an ingredient story. You never have to, like, they never fall into the tropes of beer. They kind of created a bunch, but they never. They never. When you look at all the ads over the years, from, like, their, you know, their. Their holiday work to just their, like, simple bottle stuff, it just. It never falls into a trophy place. They kind of seem to just kind of, like, hum along and do the same thing, which I think is just brilliant. It's just, like, so simple. It takes such restraint to do that as a brand. Like, there's. It's so easy to be like, oh, shoot, sales are down. Let's hammer on the wheat. We Use, you know, and that, you know, doesn't necessarily work that well. But so I think the work over the years is something that I've admired. I've used so many times in presentations as best in brands to steal from. So I, I've, I've always been impressed with them.

[Fergus O'Rourke]

What do you think, Rachel?

[Rachel Poole]

Yeah, I agree. I think that the word that you use, Julian, restraint, is one of the key things that I think about. It's kind of in a similar way to, I think a lot of the Guinness work has done, right, like playing with the bottle, playing with the serve, all of those kinds of things. But also even the work that did well at Cannes this year, both in Solar Eclipse and Sun Reserve, they were so restrained in terms of the way that they explain the idea, the way that they execute the idea, how that shows up in placements, what that actually looks like. It would have been so easy to put a hat on a hat on a hat. But they really are so brilliant at kind of stripping it back to the essence of what they're trying to say and letting that do the talking rather than kind of over explaining or over eating anything.

[Vanessa Chin]

With that from an out of home perspective. And they follow all of the key things that you want to do with out of home that we've, that we've studied, which is, you know, keep it simple, few words, use your distinctive assets, make it well branded. But the thing that I find most interesting when I test the out of home is the dwell time. As simple as it is, it's so visually stunning that the dwell time is higher than really anything. You see this, this is.

[Fergus O'Rourke]

What do you mean by the dwell time, Vanessa?

[Vanessa Chin]

The amount of time. So we allow in our survey respondents the ability to skip or to stop looking at an ad, and the amount of time that they stay looking at the ad, even with its simplicity, they're not staying to read a bunch of words. They're staying because it's visually stunning and they're thinking about it and they like it and they enjoy it.

[Fergus O'Rourke]

Like, I wonder what the brief was back in the day. Because back in the 80s, this was the first, this was the first Mexican beer being introduced at a mainstream level into the U.S. now, if you're thinking, okay, well, which sort of, what kind of iconography, what kind of cultural symbolism can you bring into the US to market a Mexican beer? They went to the beach.

[Vanessa Chin]

One thing that you see, listen, really positive responses is what we call, like, a clear sense of place. So if you have the ability to put yourself in that situation. And that's, I think, what Corona does best. You can. You can almost feel yourself sitting in that chair, putting your toes in the sand, feeling the sun on your skin. And having that ability through work in a really calm, restrained way is really powerful in seeing success.

[Fergus O'Rourke]

Like, I can imagine Rachel, before we go to Matthew, I can imagine, Rachel, that a creative team or a strategist would be kind of going, okay, we're going to be on a beach. We're going to show the bottles. Yeah, I totally get that. So where the hell are we going to go with this long term?

[Julian Morgan]

Yeah.

[Rachel Poole]

Well, I think that that is the thing that they've grappled with over time. Right. Is how to evolve from it being purely the physical place of a beach to being a intangible emotional feeling of relaxation, of escapism, of something that doesn't necessarily require you to be, you know, in a swimsuit in amongst sand and ocean. Like, I think that now, really, you can see that they're trying to break out of the constraints of what the beach may have been for them into a kind of more abstract notion of what beach may mean in terms of the feeling that. That evokes for people.

[Julian Morgan]

Yeah, I feel like it's a bit of a miss. Like, it. It doesn't. It doesn't have the same.

[Fergus O'Rourke]

Are we talking about the Snoop work now?

[Julian Morgan]

Yeah, like Snoop and the Pedro Pascal and all these things. Like, I think it's.

[Matthew Herbert]

It's.

[Julian Morgan]

To me, it's doing the opposite of what Uber is doing. It's celebrity for celebrity's sake. There's no idea there. And it's kind of just trying to weave.

[Fergus O'Rourke]

Interesting. Interesting.

[Julian Morgan]

Yeah.

[Fergus O'Rourke]

Drag themselves in the pop culture.

[Julian Morgan]

Exactly. And I think that, you know, I think a brand as iconic as them that has built decades and decades of equity should be flexing that equity. They shouldn't be trying to weave themselves into pop culture in the way that they are. They should be playing with what. What they mean as a brand in a fresh way. I think this notion of, like, finding your beach or the fine life, I think is, like, really fun, and it's a powerful thing to. To be able to harness. But at the same time, I feel like the tides have changed. Culturally, that may not mean the same thing. People may struggle to actually grasp, like, why that's important, or they might be like, go f yourself. Like, I'm, you know, I'm struggling in life. You're telling me to find a beach. I can't afford that. Like, it may just not be connecting in the Right way. And so the opportunity and what I. If I were working on it, I would be pushing the creative team and the strategists. So, like, let's find ways to utilize the equity that we have.

[Fergus O'Rourke]

So what's the. What is that equity, Julian? And does that mean. Are you thinking get off the beach?

[Julian Morgan]

No, no. I'm saying. I'm saying you prove to me that it's the fine life proved. Prove it to me. Show that using the brand in a fresh way. I think all they're doing is espousing that you need to find your beach, that the live the fine life. But they're not proving that that's something that's actually accessible through my product. They're not showing me that. That why that matters in a modern way. They're just kind of leveraging the fact that they're like, we're the beach beer, and that's the only thing that matters.

[Fergus O'Rourke]

You know, everyone's so busy keeping up. Forget about the Joneses. We all on our telephones with the.

[Julian Morgan]

Text and the tweets and the beats. What he says, she said.

[Fergus O'Rourke]

Can't even follow the three down the hole.

[Matthew Herbert]

We all go.

[Fergus O'Rourke]

Me, I like keeping up, too, with.

[Matthew Herbert]

My Corona and my attitude.

[Julian Morgan]

That's the fine life, baby.

[Rachel Poole]

I totally agree with you, Julian. I think that, like, at the moment, it still feels like it's an. The beach is an aspiration rather than being achievable.

[Vanessa Chin]

Right.

[Rachel Poole]

And I think that, to your point, that's really the job to be done now is like, how do you ground that in something that feels like. To your point earlier, Vanessa, that someone can actually see themselves in that scenario rather than it feeling like something for someone else. Another time, another day, not for me. And I think that that's really the thing that as the times have changed, that that's really, I think, where we're seeing the tide to Modelo.

[Julian Morgan]

I think that sometimes brands lose the fact of what reality is and what they're pushing, what consumers experience on the day to day and what they want them to actually think or feel. I think that they're just a little too far away, and I don't think that they have to do too much to get back there, but I think that they could. They could bring some modernity and some. Some realism to what's happening and play with that in a fresh way. I think there's tension there and there's something fun for them to. To jump on.

[Matthew Herbert]

I will say, though, Corona in the US Right now has the strongest funnel metrics in brand health, they're 80% awareness, 47% consideration their leading preference at 15% which is basically saying if you know or are aware of corona, 32% of people are saying it's my most preferred brand of beer. And so it's strong.

[Fergus O'Rourke]

We'll be right back. Want always on brand metrics that deliver value to stakeholders. This episode is brought to you by Tracksuit, a beautiful, affordable and always on brand tracking tool that helps consumer marketers and agencies answer the question is what we're doing working? A not so secret fact is that companies pay $100,000 or more for brand tracking, which is out of the question for many modern brands whose budgets are under pressure. Tracksuit provides enterprise level brand tracking without the big price tag. Their in house research experts do the heavy lifting, using best in class practices to craft and launch your survey and get you results fast. Tracksuit is fast becoming the common language for marketers and agencies to measure and communicate the value of brand building. Check it [e-mail] that's gotracksuit.com now back to the show.

[Vanessa Chin]

I love this conversation because it is like a tale of two stories here in terms of their distinctive assets, what they're able to do, how they've been consistent has allowed them to continually outpace the category average in beer, which is a really, there's a lot of fun and a lot of really stunning work in that category and to continually outpace it. Now on average, they continually score in the threes. And so what is separating them from maybe a four star ad or a five star ad? And I think that gets to store storytelling and storytelling is, you know, really powerful in terms of making people feel something and it doesn't have to even be, you know, seeing yourself, but really understanding a story between two people and starting to explore that a little bit more intimately. I mean, we're all humans, we like to see human stories and that could level up the emotional intensity of the work.

[Fergus O'Rourke]

I think that brands that have, like Corona, they have done such great work for such a long time that they've become a preferred brand. Beer for some people I think out of habit and habit I think can be, if it's not treated well, it can be easily dislodged by somebody else. And I almost think that there's this sort of static sense to Corona over the years that they have embedded all of these assets with us. But I'm not sure if they've changed in our mind as we've changed and you know, and to Julian's point earlier about forcing, not forcing, but using Snoop, using Bad Bunny, using other celebrities to sort of inject something in it. It doesn't feel that a whole lot has changed. And I think the biggest symbol of this problem for Corona is what happened with Modelo. So Modelo, which is also ironically owned by Constellation Brands, they're actually beer siblings under the same portfolio. The interesting thing about Modelo is where arguably Corona has been sort of marketing to American values. Modelo comes into the market and it begins to market to Hispanic values. So where Corona has been around relaxation, escapism, premium Modelo comes into the market and has dislodged Corona in off premise, which is where the majority, like, I think it's like 75% of their beer sales are off premise. Modelo comes in and it's about Hispanic value because it's marketing directly to the Hispanic audience. The Corona never did that. They were marketing to the American audience, audience, hard work, heritage determination, broadening the appeal to a multicultural audience, and has now dislodged Corona as the number one selling imported beer brand in the US You've earned this. So hold it up high. You handle chaos with composure because everything.

[Julian Morgan]

You do behind the scenes sets the.

[Fergus O'Rourke]

Stage for their big day. You are a fan, fighter, and this is your reward. Modelo, the mark of a fighter.

[Julian Morgan]

Yeah. The idea of Modelo is like they position themselves as like a reward. They frame it up differently, but like, that's ultimately what they're. They are. And I think that's an interesting thing. There's like so many. I, I think that that's broad reaching, even though it is targeted to a specific demographic like that, that, you know, you hear of the little tree culture and, and all these people, you know, all these things where people are trying to find rewards in more simplistic, daily ways. I think Modelo is kind of like locked into that. I look at their work though, and I'm like, I don't think the work. I think you mentioned this earlier. I don't think the work is the main driver of a lot of these decisions and things. But I think that they've got something interesting and that it almost reminds me of how Stella, a long time ago kind of positioned themselves. And the ritual around that was very different. It was like premium feel. You had to wrap, like taking off the, you know, the aluminum foil and all these things. Like there's something more to it that I think Corona is kind of on its back foot with, with the ritual is a bit more of a, you know, cut A line, put it in versus like, oh, this is like unwrapping a present after a hard shift or whatever, you know, that's right.

[Rachel Poole]

The occasion is also kind of different too.

[Vanessa Chin]

Right?

[Rachel Poole]

Like, Corona is a far more passive occasion that they're associating themselves with. It's very much a beard to have when you're doing nothing, as opposed to Modelo pitching themselves as a far more active thing, like a reward, as you're saying, which means unlike a beer to have when you're doing nothing, it's a beer to have once you've done something, you know, which I think is really what is resonating again. Remains to be said whether it's exactly the work, but I think that that's also part of the, the difference in where these two brands are kind of seeing the fork in the road.

[Fergus O'Rourke]

Their, their line, by the way, is brewed for those with a fighting spirit. Vanessa, what, how did, how do these, how do these Modelo ads play?

[Vanessa Chin]

Average. So, you know, I think the thing when you decide to zero in on a certain group, what, what we study in our, our feeling seen research is you're not going to hurt yourself by going after a very specific group, but you will, amongst that specific group, see an uplift. And so I think that's the strategy here. And, you know, it's, it's above the category average. The bear category average is very low. It's like 2.0. So there's a lot of great ads and a lot of not so great ads and it outpaces with like a 2.7. So is it the best, best campaign in our database? No, but it's hardworking and that's against general population. If I would have tested it against a custom sample, I am certain I would see an uplift.

[Fergus O'Rourke]

Let's go around the table and just sort of get your overall thoughts on Corona and also Uber. If you see any commonalities between them, what was what sort of stands out for you or what do you think they. They could do to improve things? And then going to spin the wheel here, and I'm going to start off with, with Rachel.

[Rachel Poole]

I mean, I think that when you look at the two brands kind of side by side, I think that Uber Eats has done an incredible job at being incredibly current and reflective of the times that we're in, whether that is through the choice of celebrity, the way that they're using those celebrities, the puns that they choose to infiltrate through all of the work, like the way that they make it feel very of now whereas I think that as we've been speaking about, I think that the Corona work in particular, it's got a little bit of a job to be done to bring it into 20, 25 and beyond. And look, I hope that for such an iconic brand that they can manage to do that, but it kind of remains to be seen.

[Fergus O'Rourke]

And there's still the, by a deep margin, there's still the preferred beer on premise. So bars, restaurants, it's all Corona. It's when it's off premise.

[Rachel Poole]

I actually wonder if some of that is to do with bottle versus can. To be honest, I think that Modelo does really, really well in the can format which I believe is stronger for the off premise occasion versus the bottle versus on premise.

[Fergus O'Rourke]

So maybe you're buying it by the case, right?

[Vanessa Chin]

That's right.

[Fergus O'Rourke]

Julian, how about you?

[Julian Morgan]

Yeah, I think, I mean Rachel's kind of said the things that I would, I would have said but I think the things that stand out to me are like the power of a good idea. I think, you know, for both brands, one we a good idea from like, you know, for Corona, from the very beginning they kind of hammer this simple idea. I think now it's time for them to like find another way at that idea, reinvent the same idea. I think it would be my push for them. And then Uber I think is, is, you know, they're a great example of a brand that can take an idea and make it more powerful using things like celebrity distinctive assets and, and timeliness. Like they seem to have that on lockdown. So it's very, very impressive.

[Fergus O'Rourke]

I wonder if new use occasions is a big opportunity for those Corona, for Corona because to Matthew's point earlier, it's like the seasonality issue. It's beach and of course it's oh, it's beach in many markets all year round. You know, if you're in Miami versus if you're in Chicago. But I wonder if there's a new use occasion for those guys going forward. How about, how about Matthew?

[Matthew Herbert]

I think that Julian said that there with the Ubereats has been able to evolve a very creative and simple idea going back to 2017, out of Australia into the US across sports, you know, from tennis to the NFL with relevant stories, with relevant celebrities. And Corona has stuck with the same idea, but maybe they're stuck with the same idea. And so what does the evolution of that look like? Although saying that I will be having a Corona on my honeymoon in a couple of days, so I'm going to.

[Fergus O'Rourke]

Be very happy yeah, because they did try. They did try find your beach, which was in 2010. That was an attempt to be about a mindset and not a place. But it's. It's tough. I mean, it is tough. Vanessa, how about you for final points?

[Vanessa Chin]

Sure. Final point. Corona 0.0 is actually my favorite beer, so I just have it be known, however, I think for these two brands, I think if they could go on vacation together, maybe Matt with Matt and Tahiti, they could share notes on, you know, Corona on the side of distinctive assets and how to really reinforce those over time. And then, you know, Uber eats with their ability to, you know, really strong humor, really strong storyte and eliciting emotional response. That way they could trade some notes.

[Fergus O'Rourke]

Yeah. What I'd love to see, Vanessa, would have been the results if any of those 1980s ads were tested, because they were so brilliant. They felt I can do that at the time. Right. They were.

[Vanessa Chin]

So don't worry. I'll put it in later today.

[Fergus O'Rourke]

Yeah, we'll see. But then you're exposing it to people who've been exposed to it for 40 years. So I think it's.

[Vanessa Chin]

So it's gonna. It's gonna have an uplift.

[Fergus O'Rourke]

All right, guys. It is. It is. It is great to have everybody here on the show. Thank you to Rachel Poole, to Julian Morgan, to Vanessa Chin, to Matthew Herbert. Matthew, have a great honeymoon in Tahiti. And we will have you guys all back next month. And you can see all of the creative work on our website and also on our YouTube channel. We just actually launched it last week, so we're going to do a slow build on YouTube. But you can see all of these shows, including this one will be on YouTube as well as you can listen on wherever you get your. Your podcast. Thank you, everybody. See everybody next month. Have a terrific week, everybody.

[Matthew Herbert]

All right, team. Bye.

[Fergus O'Rourke]

Bye.