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- [00:00]
Fergus O'Carroll
Welcome to OnStrategy Showcase. I'm Fergus O' Carroll in Chicago. I hope you're having a brilliant summer. I'm excited to have this conversation with Uber Eats today. We've had them on the show a couple of times and loved every conversation. But today we're going to be zeroing in on the NFL sponsorship that they did last year. This is not the first time they've done an NFL sponsorship, but it is certainly, I think, the strongest strategic direction that they've taken. And I love the work and I'm sure everybody has seen it. If you've not seen it, you can go to our website@onstrategyshowcase.com there's little, there's parts of this, particularly the teaser ads, and I'm not talking about teasers just leading up to the super bowl game itself, but sort of the work that went throughout the entire season that you can see on our website. I am thrilled to have today Kelsey Hodgkin. She is CEO and partner of the Special Group in Los Angeles who did all of this work. And we are thrilled to be joined by Georgie Jeffries, who's head of marketing for North America at Uber. We're excited to have Georgie on. It took us a little while to get there because of scheduling conflicts, but we are very thrilled to have her be a part of this. So let's talk a little bit about the campaign. I want to play you the spot and then we'll get into the interview. So there was this insight at the heart of all of this, which was this connection between food cravings and football. And so the entire campaign was designed around this idea that maybe the NFL was actually a conspiracy to sell food. I know that sounds kind of wild and crazy, but it was a brilliant thought. So you're going to be seeing spots or. Well, I'll play you once, but I'll pay you the super bowl spot now. And sorry, if you're listening to this and you can't see it, you can see it on our website. But in essence, this is a series of small, short vignettes that are talking or referring to the fact that this might have been a conspiracy going back to the early formation of the NFL, many decades ago, now up to date. And McConaughey, Matthew McConaughey is at the heart of this. And just some stuff that is so funny. I'm a particular fan of the Kevin Bacon part where he comes in, but absolutely, if you haven't seen this, it is well worth a listen. So this is the conversation about Uber Eats. And I'm thrilled to have Kelsey Hodgkin and Georgie Jeffries join me. Enjoy this spot.
- [02:23]
Matthew McConaughey
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 pig skin. Make people crave bacon.
- [02:36]
Kelsey Hodgkin
Bacon.
- [02:37]
Matthew McConaughey
Everybody loves bacon. I love bacon. They do anything to sell food.
- [02:40]
Fergus O'Carroll
Coach, how come we only play on Sundays?
- [02:42]
Matthew McConaughey
Because nobody's eating ice cream Saturdays, kid. Jeez. So the packers were named after meat packers.
- [02:48]
Kelsey Hodgkin
So what should we call the fans?
- [02:49]
Georgie Jeffries
Go.
- [02:51]
Kelsey Hodgkin
Cheese heads. Of course.
- [02:53]
Matthew McConaughey
Why do you think Buffalo got a team?
- [02:55]
Fergus O'Carroll
These wings deserve a team.
- [02:57]
Matthew McConaughey
Yeah, I figured out a good team name for Buffalo Bill.
- [03:00]
Kelsey Hodgkin
Buffalo.
- [03:02]
Matthew McConaughey
Buffalo in their biggest game. Come on. Our championship will be a Super Cup. Can't eat out of a cup, Ted. But a bowl? How about a Super Bowl? And we'll start naming players after appliances.
- [03:16]
Fergus O'Carroll
Hey, Coach, do I have to be called Refrigerator?
- [03:19]
Georgie Jeffries
Yes.
- [03:19]
Matthew McConaughey
And Peyton, he was a beef salesman. Omaha Steak.
- [03:23]
Fergus O'Carroll
Omaha Steak.
- [03:25]
Matthew McConaughey
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.
- [03:37]
Fergus O'Carroll
A stallion.
- [03:41]
Matthew McConaughey
Matthew.
- [03:42]
Georgie Jeffries
Matthew.
- [03:44]
Matthew McConaughey
Yeah.
- [03:44]
Georgie Jeffries
Hey, sorry, S. You want me to make a movie about a football conspiracy? Yes. No.
- [03:50]
Matthew McConaughey
Come on, Greta.
- [03:51]
Georgie Jeffries
No.
- [03:51]
Matthew McConaughey
Bacon's in.
- [03:52]
Fergus O'Carroll
Everybody loves bacon.
- [03:53]
Georgie Jeffries
No one believes that football is just some conspiracy to sell food.
- [03:58]
Matthew McConaughey
When football makes you hungry, order Uber eats.
- [04:00]
Fergus O'Carroll
I am thrilled to have Georgie and Kelsey here. Thank you to both of you for joining me.
- [04:06]
Kelsey Hodgkin
Thank you, Fergus. It's a huge, huge pleasure and privilege. We're such big fans of your podcast, and as a strategist and heart, it's just an amazing gift to the strategy community as well.
- [04:18]
Fergus O'Carroll
So thank you, and, Georgie, great to have you on.
- [04:21]
Georgie Jeffries
Thank you so much for having me. I know it's been a long time coming, and. Yes, very excited to be here. A long time listener of the show, so this feels very special.
- [04:30]
Fergus O'Carroll
So I have heard so many great things about you, and they all boil down to, which is what the most important thing is for people like us in the industry. It all boils down to the fact that you have a reputation for having phenomenal taste in creativity. And I want to expand on that by saying you've got a reputation for even pushing incredible creative agencies to do even better. Where did that sort of passion for great work come from?
- [05:01]
Georgie Jeffries
You're making me blush. That's very the. That's very lovely. I can't really pinpoint exactly where my, you know, my love for advertising creative comes from or came from. I certainly have been interested and passionate about advertising and have been a very creative person growing up my whole life and, you know, was very interested in advertising even before I formally took a marketing role. I would, you know, genuinely say one of the things that has been most formative and helpful is in me building out my skill set and being able to understand what good work looks like is I have had the benefit and certainly the luck in my early years of working with incredible people. In fact, when I first started at Uber, even unwittingly, the team that I was surrounded by, which pretty quickly became the special group agency in Australia, as well as my boss at the time, Steve Brennan, would just are and continue to be some of the most incredible kind of marketing and creative minds. And to be exposed to that so early into your care means that you get a very quick and early sense of what great work looks like, how to push when work is high potential, but not yet high performing, how to establish really strong partnerships with your agencies and your creative partners so that you can push and pull in the right areas. And I think if I hadn't have had that experience so early in my career, I don't know if I probably would have rounded out my skill set in the way that I have since. So I do put a lot of it down just to the training ground that I had the privilege of walking into.
- [06:36]
Fergus O'Carroll
It's interesting, Georgie, because not everybody would think that a brand that's rooted in technology would be a brand that is a creative cultural force. Is it something that the culture had to learn over time as it began to market more?
- [06:53]
Georgie Jeffries
Yes and no. I think what is true about Uber is whether or not we're a tech company, we are an outlier in every industry. You know, I've been at Uber for 10 years now and it is the DNA of Uber is very much about taking risk and being ambitious no matter what department you're in. And you know that that can't help but translate through to marketing. I think it's fair to say that in the early days of Uber, certainly when I was there, even doing big, bold marketing campaigns was a bit of a risk because we traditionally hadn't had to rely on marketing or think about marketing to grow the product. If you think about Uber in the early early days, it was all about high speed, organic growth and doing, you know, didn't feel like they were part of the mold. Everything from, you know, we Used to grow and market ourselves by delivering ice cream and kittens on demand and transforming and evolving from a company that still had that edge and that, you know, ambitious, innovative muscle, but doing it in a way that had more scale and could reach more people and shape the brand narrative. That did take a bit of a leap of faith from, from a lot of different people at the time and leadership. But I think what is true about Uber, no matter what, whether you're working in the finance department, whether you're working in hr, whether you're working in S and P or in brand marketing, you know, we are, we are all about taking smart risks and we're a very, very ambitious group of people and company as a result.
- [08:17]
Fergus O'Carroll
Tell us, as a marketer, what are the marketing challenges you face? Is it reach? Is it consideration? Is it creative breakthrough? Is it getting into new markets? Is it partnerships? What is the marketing challenge you face?
- [08:32]
Georgie Jeffries
Well, in the early days, and I actually did have the blessing of being in Australia in the early days when we launched and scaled Uber Eats, and the challenge then, which I think is true for most markets around the world when they launched, was really around. It sounds counterintuitive, but it was actually really around establishing credibility and trust with consumers that we, not only that we could, you know, get you from A to B safely, but that we could deliver food. It feels and sounds like, you know, if someone trusts us to get them somewhere safely, they should trust us to deliver them their McDonald's or their pad Thai. But actually what we found pretty quickly was that that wasn't necessarily true. It's still the challenge now. You know, the industry, whilst it's evolved pretty rapidly and continues to, we have to earn and re. Earn the role that we play with consumers every day and every month. You know, being relevant and being top of mind is probably the number one ongoing challenge.
- [09:24]
Fergus O'Carroll
How do you think about that, Kelsey, in terms of the marketing challenge?
- [09:28]
Kelsey Hodgkin
Yeah, I think look at a kind of core strategic point of view. Even though it's. It's always weird when you work on a big brand like Uber and everyone's like, oh, they're definitely the leader in the category. But UberEats is a challenger in, in the delivery space and in the food space. And that as a strategist, we know it's like a, you know, a, a very specific set of rules applied to you on how you're going to show up and how you need to show up, which is you do need to think a lot more laterally about how you approach the market. You need to be a lot more creative about how you can kind of make an impression when you are often against, up against bigger budgets and bigger kind of share of voice and attention. And I think, but I love working on challenge brands for that reason because they force you to be more creative in how you show up and they force you to think more differently about how you can take opportunities. And I think one of the things we've really always thought about with Uber is like, how do you show up in entertainment spaces, for example, in a really meaningful way? They're huge kind of moments for the brand. They're huge usage moments. And I think it's something we've really kind of focused on from a challenger point of view almost of like if we can't, if we can't be present in every single moment in the way that, you know, a bigger brand might be able to, how do we make sure that we are the most top of mind in the moments that are the most important from a delivery point of view? And those are often kind of the entertainment moments when everyone's standing around a TV or sitting around a TV and you know, food and delivery is such a big part of that.
- [10:51]
Fergus O'Carroll
I was so surprised to hear that Doordash was so much larger than Uber. I think of Uber as being so ubiquitous, it's on almost everybody's phone. The ads are so ubiquitous. And it was always surprising to me that Doordash was so much larger. So I can totally understand that, you know, reach and being top of mind, Georgie, is the most critical thing and makes sense particularly in the conversation we're going to have today, which is about sports sponsorships getting into these massive moments where people are connecting and people are connecting around a certain event. Tell us about the history of Uber Eats with sports sponsorships.
- [11:36]
Georgie Jeffries
Yeah, and what I will just say is, look, we have a lot of respect for our competitors. Doordash is a fierce competitor of ours in the US and so, you know, kudos to them and everything they're doing. The way that we think about it generally from a marketing perspective is, you know, we fight like a category challenger and we show up like a category category leader. And, and hopefully that comes through in, you know, the perceptions and the optics that a lot of consumers have. Because even if we are a challenger, it's important for people to think of us first and most predominantly when they think about their food delivering occasion. And that's that, that's the, you know, the key thing that we're continuing to chase on a day in, day out. Basis. And sports is a really big part of that. For, For a lot of reasons. Sports is actually core to the Uber eats strategy in a lot of the big markets around the world that we operate in. For us in the US There are a couple of reasons as to why we've leaned into sports so heavily and continue to. The first is just the, like, it's not sexy, but the quality of the media. It's really hard to reach a lot of people at the same time these days. We all know that media is so fragmented. So to have the. Have an episodic media type event happen, you know, a couple of times a week, if not, you know, three or four times a week with something like the NFL and have that. That same passionate cohort show up, if not for every game, then for every few games, and tune in. They're all watching at the same time. They're engaging, they're participating. That type of media is. Is hard to come by, and it's pretty lucrative if you can tap it into it in the right way. The second reason why sports is really important for us is because it's obviously just very tightly aligned with the food ordering occasion. Now, that doesn't mean that we're going to convert all consumers in the whole audience in that moment to order something they weren't going to order. But we're certainly marketing to. At a very. At a moment where there is, you know, high intent that you can capitalize on for then or capitalize on for later. And so strategically, it makes a lot of sense from a media perspective. It makes a lot of sense. And it also typically gets us to really get great creative work because you've got a lot of photo to work with.
- [13:39]
Fergus O'Carroll
So how do you. Have you. Have you been involved in sports sponsorship for a number of years in the US or is this. Is this the first major one?
- [13:47]
Georgie Jeffries
No, we've been a major partner of the NFL for, I think, going on four years now. And even outside of our major sponsorships, we also lean into the media environment around sports, whether or not we have a partnership, you know, with that particular. That particular property. For example, like a lot of brands, we show up in a big way around March Madness, though we're not necessarily a core partner of March Madness. NFL is different. We are a major sponsor of March Madness. We are the official food delivery sponsor. Sorry, of the NFL. We are the official food delivery sponsor of the NFL. We have been for some time, and we have been progressively increasing our presence and expanding our marketing roster around the NFL. You know, it's it's the NFL runs for 18 to 26 weeks of the year. Once you start to include all the playoffs, it's a long running, you know, season. And to lean into that in a really effective way takes time to build the muscle, especially if you're approaching it from full funnel. And so over the last three years, we've really upped the ante every year. And obviously coming out of 2024, 2025 season, we think we've had go yet and have really established for us and a team what it means to show up in a really robust and high impact way throughout the whole season.
- [15:00]
Fergus O'Carroll
So, Kelsey, the latest work is probably one of the most memorable and so acutely tied to football. What was it about prior efforts that led you to sort of or that sort of fed into. Were there lessons that fed into this year or was it, was that not the way it was shaped?
- [15:22]
Kelsey Hodgkin
I think we thought a lot about sponsorships that are just showing up on the game and the sponsors are actually in the game. And then when I kind of was actually revisiting our brief statement as we kind of started on this project, that was such a consistent theme in all of it was like, we can't just be on the game, we have to be in the game. And an example of that is like if you look at kind of a Nike or Gatorade, they're very embedded in the game. They're on the shirts, they're in the, you know, they're in the infrastructure, then the fabric of the game. And then you have other kind of brands where you're like, you're doing the advertising around it, but you're not actually in it. And I think we were like, we have to find a way to put Uber in the game to make it part of the ecosystem, not just a kind of showing up around the ecosystem. And I think that was a fundamental starting point. As we thought about the brief and how to change what we've been doing from before.
- [16:09]
Georgie Jeffries
One of the other lessons that we had as well that was pretty formative in, in how we structure the campaign was one of the challenges with something like NFL is because it runs for so many weeks and there's actually such a long running season, it's possible for your creative to have a sense of message fatigue around it. You can also get to a point where you actually have suboptimal frequency because it's so high. Your frequency becomes so high with the same consumer group thereabouts. Obviously there's different, different people tuning in and out Each week. But, you know, NFL fandom is NFL fandom. We had certainly experienced that it being something that had been nagging at us and we felt it was actually an opportunity and to start to use a season in an episodic nature and actually think of it as a progressive story that you're telling. Now, of course that's not a perfect science because as I said there, you know, the audience does change a little bit here and there throughout the weeks depending on what the game is. But generally, if you think of the NFL fandom is one universe and for the most part, they're tuning in throughout the season. And you start to think about the way that you build, structure, progress and sequence your creative more as its own TV show with different episodes to tune into. And that also meant, you know, really upping the ante and raising the bar on. Was the quality of the content and the entertainment of the fact entertainment factor of the content really high. And did we actually. Do we actually have. Not that they're spoilers or kind of cliffhangers, but the, the different types of offers that we attach to different food conspirac and that we provided to consumers each week that strategically changed so that it felt like the story was progressing.
- [17:47]
Fergus O'Carroll
So did you see a ton of ideas up front, Georgie? Are you a person who prefers to see tight, lesser number of ideas? Because I can imagine that the way you're describing it, I can imagine that there's a sense that that could lead to an awful lot of big great ideas.
- [18:07]
Georgie Jeffries
With this particular brief, I actually can't quite remember how many ideas were in the first round, but in the very first round, football is for food. And that strategy walk up was presented and we were like, well, here it is. Ta da. We obviously didn't have to be. You didn't have to have particularly sound judgment to immediately get that that was just a standout idea that we should absolutely run after. I think at the time the territory we fell in love with the executions. There was still a lot of opportunity with where we take it and what direction take it. But certainly just you say football is for food and you show people this lineup of, of coincidences or conspiracies rather of how football is embedded into food. Whether, you know, French fries look like goal posts or the super bowl was being held at the Caesar stadium and you can't, you can't unsee it.
- [18:58]
Fergus O'Carroll
So that was all part of the original creative pitch. You saw all of those, those ideas we saw.
- [19:04]
Georgie Jeffries
I can't remember exactly what was in the very first creative pitch. But we saw a lineup of. Of the examples that came to life, and a lot of them, you know, were. Were made the final cut into the creative itself. I will say the. The Caesars Stadium being the super bowl stadium for that year was on our vision board from June 2024. And it took us up until, I think, January to really get Caesars. You know, Caesars were an amazing partner, and to get them over the line and to participate in that way, we pitched our little socks off throughout the year and kind of kept it that one to make sure we could bring it to life. But, yeah, a lot of the great ideas that we saw on the very first day in terms of the coincidences, we found a way to make sure they came to fruition throughout the campaign period.
- [19:48]
Fergus O'Carroll
So, Kelsey, tell us about how this campaign comes together conceptually, internally. Because looking, you know, as Georgie's saying, looking at the entire season as an episodic experience, how are you mapping that out?
- [20:04]
Kelsey Hodgkin
Well, I don't know that we burdened ourselves at the beginning with the piece. I think we knew that was we start. I definitely think we started with the idea. I mean, Georgie came to us with. And I really stress this guy. Do you think it's a big part of the way we're breached by Uber, which was like, we do want to. We do want to be, like, the number one standout sponsor. Like, that was the ambition. And we talk a lot about risk and ambition on Uber, but, like, the ambition really is. Is at the heart of every starting point, because when you know what you're aiming for and the scale of what you're trying to get to, it does set a certain bar of, like, what the work has to be able to deliver on. But I think beyond that, the brief really centered on the idea of cravings, and that was how we came at it and how Georgie came at it with us. We have a platform, we have amazing selection. This campaign in particular, we want to focus more on kind of delivery food. And within that, we think there's something really interesting happening with cravings. And how do we make Ubereats sort of more associated with cravings and foods you crave in football. And from there, I think we. Which I think was a really important starting point. We had a little nugget that was like when you. When Uber's in the same ad break as other kind of fast food brands, we see sort of an increase sometimes in the sales impact that that has for Uber. So that was also, like, a really good nugget around Cravings. And that sort of led the strategy team into a zone of. Of. I mean, cravings is such a fun topic, and so many QSL brands candidly use cravings. I've had a lot of luck and joy working on some of the other ones, but I think for this one, we were like, okay, cravings are actually really. There's something really subliminal about them. And that sort of nugget about the Uber when they're in an ad rig with other brands really kind of set us off on that trend. And we kind of looked at it in lots of different ways. Like, we looked at what does cravings mean in TikTok and sort of seeing the, like, when challenges, I think, was out at time as a movie and, like, how that was driving certain desires and trends on TikToks for things like, for things that were in that show, that movie. And then on the other end. And this is probably more how I think than not necessarily a good thing. There were, like, examples of, you know, Silence of the Lambs and Hannibal Lecter kind of playing what you see every day. But he kind of got to this, like, idea of, like, actually there's something really interesting about cravings of it is this quite subliminal thing. And it's always triggered by something, but you might not always realize exactly what it's triggered by. And I think from there, the creatives took the genius leap into, well, wait a minute. If you think about subliminal cravings and things that are in that you don't necessarily know that you're saying, but you're kind of actually being presented with every day and you look at football and you don't have to look very hard to go, oh, my gosh, there's so many things in there. And I think to Georgie's point, like, I was actually revisiting the deck just as we were kind of preparing for this, and. And the very first deck had, you know, what if. Have you ever noticed that goal posts look a little bit like French fries? Have you noticed that a quarter sounds awfully similar to a quarter pounder? Have you ever noticed that, like, Jerry Rice is called Jerry Rice? Have you ever noticed almost just like a series of these things? And that sort of did. Have the. Have you ever noticed that the season, the super bowl is going to be played in the Caesar Salad Superdome? So it's just like, you know, six or seven from different corners of the game sort of on the field, the players, the teams where it's hosted, and you, like, sort of start spinning it all together. And to George's point, like, once you see it, you can't unsee it. And I think that, like, all credit to the creatives, they really kind of took that leap and took something that was so simple and can and. And I think really delivered on that thing I talked about earlier as well, of like, how do we be in the game, not just on the game, and sort of found our role within the. Within the ecosystem of it.
- [23:50]
Fergus O'Carroll
I mean, Georgie, what are your memories from those sort of formative days of the work?
- [23:56]
Georgie Jeffries
Oh, again, it was just such a home run of an idea. We knew that we had to do it. There is these campaigns, when they are very large in scale and have a lot of promise, also give you the most anxiety because you're just so anxious about making sure you make the most of its potential. And I think the thing that gave us the most heartburn was it wasn't enough for us just to point out the conspiracy and the coincidences. We really felt very strongly that we had to bring that to life through activations and stunts and through promos and deals. And so that meant that we had to go out and pitch to dozens and dozens of different brands and players and get them to buy into it and be a part of it, including the NFL. And that meant, you know, kind of going out to all of our major merchant partners that were. Had really high quality, that are very high quality delivery partners that have national scale and asking them to be a part of it. You know, whether it's McDonald's or it's Domino's or it's Little Caesars or it's IHOP.
- [24:57]
Fergus O'Carroll
And in what way were you asking them to be involved?
- [25:00]
Georgie Jeffries
Well, we had to film an ad with them in it. Each brand that we, Each conspiracy that we pointed out to, of which there were a dozen or more actually, we then had to film an ad to explain that conspiracy and then offer a promo deal on that particular food item. So with McDonald's, we had to say, hey, will you, will you fund a buy one, get one french fries? Because we want to make out how funny it is that goal post look like French fries. Trust us, it's a great idea. And by the way, can you offer that deal at a national scale in three weeks and we've got to shoot it in two weeks. You know, those types of conversations and really getting as many partners on board as possible. And then, you know, we were so lucky with the NFL because it's. It requires a bit of courage from the NFL. We're really, you know, we're all. We're all being self deprecating in different ways. Matthew McConaughey was being self deprecating. Uber Eats is being self deprecating. The brands themselves and certainly the NFL. And so what I remember most from the building of the campaign was, yes, we love the idea. Now how the hell do we do we pull this off and get everybody on board, shoot it all, and then get it out to market in the next what felt like four or five weeks.
- [26:09]
Fergus O'Carroll
So how far in advance, Kelsey, are you developing this idea? And you didn't know the whole season at that point, but you probably had four or five or six ideas that you could begin shooting and then you had to sort of imagine what would come next later on in the year.
- [26:26]
Kelsey Hodgkin
Yeah. So we, I think it sort of goes back to what Georgie said earlier about the episodic look. I think we thought about the comms in two probably key ways. But I think first of all, underpinning it all was this very well articulated thought that we kept coming back to, which was the role of the brand of, like, uncover the thing, offer the thing. That was like the central mechanism at the. At the heart of the campaign. So it was like the role of Uber was this, like, self deprecating, sort of semi acknowledging observer of this conspiracy that would then back up every kind of point with a deal on the thing. So it was a massive degree of complexity to be able to deliver that part of the brand role. In terms of the season, it was again, two probably points. There was how do we make it last over the season in a way that really pulls more and more and more people into this conspiracy? Obviously you've got football fans and the NFL regular viewers, but how do we get more and more and more of America to buy into the this? And whether that was using different kinds of celebrities or ultimately kind of doing things like the Superdome and the super bowl, where you're like, by the end of it, the whole country should be in some way engaged in this conspiracy with sort of the. The desired ambition. One view of it was like, how do you bring more and more people in? The other was like, how do you bring. How do you bring more and more gifts to the fans and like, really the hardcore NFL fans? And like, I'll tell you, for example, in the super bowl ad itself, when Matthew is in his kind of Ditka outfit with the Bears and he's talking about Refrigerator Perry, it's like, I don't know, maybe 20% of people, when we researched it knew what that was. That might be being generous, but that 20% were like, oh, my God, this is. You know, they, like, blew up on Twitter when it went live. So it's sort of really also thinking about how you reward, like, the most engaged fans as much as kind of try and do the breadth, depth in terms of bringing more and more people into it.
- [28:20]
Fergus O'Carroll
So why Matthew McConaughey at the center of it? Was there something. Was there an existing relationship with him? Georgie?
- [28:27]
Georgie Jeffries
There wasn't at that stage. We think, you know, we've used talent pretty consistently throughout different campaigns across Uber Eats. And at this stage, we have a fairly honed in sense for who is right for the brand and then who is right for a big idea. We always started it. It, you know, from a. From the place of what is the big idea? And, you know, how does the right talent fit into that? For this campaign, specifically, a few things were really important. It was really critical to us that the. The tone of the conspiracy was right. This is a joyful, you know, engaging, upbeat campaign. It was not meant to be dark. It was meant to be, if anything, a bit of escapism, you know, very irreverent, very upbeat, and very engaging. And so we needed someone who could bring that sense of joy to it, but could also do it in quite a credible way. And that meant we needed someone who, you know, America loved, whether you're on the east coast, the west coast, or in middle America, who was connected to football and football fandom. We really wanted a talent that had an authentic tie to football and loved the game, you know, as much as we know the fans do. And who is. I mean, I'll say eccentric because. Because Matthew is in the most wonderful, beautiful way, but who is eccentric in the sense that they could credibly, potentially really believe this conspiracy and be the one who's spruking it. And Matthew McConaughey very clearly ticked all those boxes. He was our number one kind of dream for this role. And thankfully, he loved it, too, as soon as he saw it. And so, yeah, we pitched it to him, and we were off to the races again pretty quickly within about a week.
- [30:02]
Fergus O'Carroll
So for me, Georgie, when I look at the body of work, my favorite part, and I've mentioned this on the show, my favorite spot was the super bowl spot. My favorite part was the cameo by Kevin Bacon. I mean, that was just the best that I've seen in so long. Do you have a favorite spot or two or component or two from the. From the season of the NFL Season.
- [30:29]
Georgie Jeffries
Work well, I obviously, I mean, I love the super bowl spot. That was a real labor of love, as you can imagine, and something that we're all so incredibly proud of.
- [30:38]
Fergus O'Carroll
I mean, him. I mean, Kevin Bacon on the speakerphone at the end. I mean, please. That is genius.
- [30:44]
Georgie Jeffries
I know, I know. That was actually a last minute ad as well. I think a couple of days before we shot it might have even been. I don't remember who came up with it. It was the director, one of the creators in the room actually in full transparency. At first, I kind of was like, yeah, that won't make the final cut. That's. There's too much going on there that's gonna. But it's turned out to be the shining light of the end sequence. I look, I actually really love and have a lot of heart for the very first brand spot for footballers for Food with Matthew and Christian and Jerry Rice. And they're. Jerry's eating rice ending on that spot.
- [31:20]
Fergus O'Carroll
Why am I still hungry?
- [31:23]
Matthew McConaughey
Because you're watching football. The whole game is basically an elaborate scheme to make you buy more food. And it's working.
- [31:32]
Fergus O'Carroll
What are you talking about?
- [31:33]
Matthew McConaughey
Think about it. Turnovers, pancake blocks, scrambles. Oh, I just scored. Feed me more.
- [31:40]
Fergus O'Carroll
Come on, McConaughey.
- [31:41]
Matthew McConaughey
Come on, McCaffrey. Jabril peppers, man. C.J. ham. Slather on some Girard mayo and you got yourself a sandwich. Refrigerator Perry was not his real name.
- [31:53]
Fergus O'Carroll
You're being serious? Yeah.
- [31:54]
Matthew McConaughey
They got you where they want you.
- [31:56]
Fergus O'Carroll
I don't think football's trying to sell you food.
- [31:59]
Matthew McConaughey
Really? Come on, man. Can you have Stanford?
- [32:07]
Fergus O'Carroll
I really don't.
- [32:08]
Matthew McConaughey
And what are you eating, Jerry?
- [32:11]
Fergus O'Carroll
Rice.
- [32:13]
Kelsey Hodgkin
Cherry's eating rice.
- [32:15]
Georgie Jeffries
Huh? The response that we had to it, I mean, we. We knew that we had potentially a winner, but the response that we had to it was unlike anything I. I've had with any of our work previously. I mean, a lot of our work gets a lot of attention and, you know, we get a lot of great feedback, but this was different in that just the volume and the quality of feedback from so many different types of people was amazing. And that was actually when we started to get that feedback in. We launched that in September, very late September, and we started to kind of really get a sense for how well it was doing and how much people loved it. In October, that was when we pivoted our super bowl strategy to go from a different brief to actually briefing in footballers for food and that spot. And so I have to always go back to that initial spot as my favorite Because I think it really did kind of set the tone and set the bar for this big, kind of beautiful ecosystem of work that we're able to create off the back of it.
- [33:07]
Fergus O'Carroll
So you already know what you're planning to do for the NFL next year, right? You've got to know at this time.
- [33:12]
Georgie Jeffries
No, we actually have a very important round one review today, I believe.
- [33:16]
Fergus O'Carroll
Oh, no kidding. Great. Could you just carry our microphone into that room? That would be fantastic.
- [33:21]
Georgie Jeffries
Yeah, exactly. Yes.
- [33:23]
Fergus O'Carroll
So as we wrap up here, let's talk about the impact that it's had. Georgie, when Uber comes out with a new campaign, you can't miss Uber. It is, and it plays out, I think, very brilliantly in almost all platforms. Where are you seeing the most results both from a brand point of view and from a business point of view?
- [33:44]
Georgie Jeffries
Yeah, I mean, as smarter people than I have said, you know, in the past trips overnight, brand over time, I think that's a saying and certainly something that we sort of, we subscribe to. We certainly think about what is the long term impact that we're building. And I think what has been interesting with this campaign is that we have seen both brand and business growth over a relatively short time. You know, some of the results that we're seeing from the brand side are things that you might, it might take you six to nine to 12 months across your kind of brand health tracking to really start to see the impact of. And we've started to see it pretty clearly, which we're very, very proud of. Obviously we designed the campaign to drive demand. There's a lot of demand gen levers built into it with the different promos and offers that we took to market at scale, whether they're buy one, get one french fries, like I mentioned, or a lot of different offers that we provided every week. And so we expected to see a healthy amount of business growth. But even with what we saw, it really far outpaced what we were expecting and general benchmarks that we'd otherwise had for those types of demand gen levers. And so I think that kind of, you know, it was a really good lesson in two things. One, it's, you know, you can give someone the same offer and the same promo, but how you wrap it and how you frame it really matters. And that's one of the reasons we've just seen that outsized growth from a business perspective with the demand gen levers.
- [35:05]
Fergus O'Carroll
We took to market conceptually how you do it or.
- [35:10]
Georgie Jeffries
Yeah, yeah. So the way that you take it, you know, if you kind of Take to market a buy one, get one french fries through the lens of this massive conspiracy theory. And it's shared in a really interesting way that you know, that excites and motivates people in a different way as to if you were just to offer it in a straight retail language. And that's been a really kind of interesting and key learning for us something that's intuitive and that you know, but when you see that in action time and time again over the campaign period like this, it really resonates and lands and is helping to shape how we think about our go to market strategy. And then from a brand perspective, brand is a long term game. You know, even if you have wins over the short term, it's still a long term game. And as I said earlier, you have to earn and re earn your place with consumers in their lives. Certainly what we have seen is the surround sound nature of this campaign and the way that we used, I would say brand drivers and demand gen drivers together I think has had a multiplier effect and is probably one of the reasons we've seen some really pronounced results alongside the fact that obviously the idea and the creative really resonated. But we're feeling really good about how the campaign came to life and the impact that it drove.
- [36:19]
Fergus O'Carroll
For many brands, if they're very well branded in the first couple of seconds, there's a case to be made that that turns people off, that they're like oh God, it's an ad. But for you guys, I think people now expect entertainment, joyful entertainment out of, out of an Uber Eats ad where doing that is smart because it actually draws me in rather than repels me.
- [36:40]
Georgie Jeffries
Yeah, I mean I hope so.
- [36:42]
Kelsey Hodgkin
And I think to your point Fergus, maybe there's less branded performance and branded entertainment. I think that is really the way we think about it of like we're competing in big cultural moments a lot of the time and talk a lot about like not having to make work that people have to be paid to be seen but that like you actually would really want to engage with and really thinking about how you do branded entertainment in a really powerful way I think gives us a lot of the key starting points. I do think also things like tone and behavior are so critical to the way we think about Uber and how Uber turns out. And I think that is that deep irreverence and sort of self awareness and everything also gives you a huge field to play with in the entertainment space of how you can engage with the brand and put the brand into conversation that doesn't have to be so kind of literal all the time. It is a kind of character, not just. Not just a logo, not just a kind of message.
- [37:39]
Fergus O'Carroll
It is. Kelsey Hodgkin is CEO and partner at Special USA out of Los Angeles. And Georgie Jeffries is head of marketing for the US and Canada at Uber in New York City. Thank you both for coming on. Thanks for making the time to talk to us. Brilliant work. It continues to inspire everybody else in the industry. I mean, we're all sort of salivating, and maybe we all want to work at Special from now on. So that's where we're just going to be all sending resumes. Thank you so much for your time, both of you.
- [38:10]
Kelsey Hodgkin
Thank you so much.
- [38:12]
Georgie Jeffries
Bye.
- [38:13]
Fergus O'Carroll
And we will see everyone on the next episode.