Why is this work relevant for PR?

Everything about this campaign was designed to earn attention - but NOT in the traditional way via the press coverage because as a non-sponsor of the Olympics, Uber Eats had to fly under the radar. Instead we took a more guerilla approach to earn attention via a creative idea built with both participation and shareability at its heart. In this way, it was designed to tap into the shared national excitement of the moment, hack the hype and trending topics around the Olympics, capitalise on second-screening behaviour at key viewing times… all while evading the non-sponsor regulations.

Background

Despite nervousness around the 2020 Olympics going ahead, over three-quarters of the Japanese population still planned to tune in and watch, making it by far the highest-engaged national sporting event. And given there would be no spectators amidst a State of Emergency where people couldn’t dine in restaurants or drink in pubs, the majority would be watching from home on TV. This represented a huge opportunity to - Tap into a heightened moment of need for at-home food delivery Continue establishing the Uber Eats brand’s ‘glocal’ cultural relevance Problem was, Uber Eats wasn't an official Olympics sponsor, so would need to somehow evade the World’s most tightly-guarded sponsorship regulations. The brief and objectives were simple - but hard. Hijack the hype around the Games to acquire new users onto the app in a way that drives positive sentiment towards the brand. And don't get caught by the IOC.

Describe the creative idea (20% of vote)

THE NAME GAMES: In a world of internet virality, there’s something new and exciting trending every single day. Something that everyone is talking about. And during the Olympics with all eyeballs firmly locked on a TV and / or phone, this would be magnified. Except as a non-Olympics sponsor, we wouldn’t be able to talk about what everyone else was talking about! So to get around this and be part of the action, we got our audience to say what we couldn’t for us. We created a daily NAME GAME, dropping a ‘promo code of the day’ which just happened to be the name of the most spoken about person each day. Which also just happened to be Olympics athletes that we weren’t allowed to talk about ourselves. So by simply dropping a daily hint at who this might be, we let our audience say what we couldn’t.

Describe the PR strategy (30% of vote)

Our idea was based on the insight that despite the tensions around Covid, we knew that as soon as the Games got going people would rally together in a much-needed moment of shared release and celebration. No-one would want to miss out on what everyone’s talking about… especially once Japan starts winning medals, or an underdog over-performs, or someone does something meme-worthy. It was this spirit of heightened national excitement, pride and camaraderie that we aimed to tap into with our strategy, above and beyond the sports and competitions themselves. To create a Game on top of the Games that would earn attention, participation and shares by being hyper-relevant to the moment.

Describe the PR execution (20% of vote)

Implementation - The campaign look at feel was a pastiche of the news in Japan. We used news anchor talent to deliver our daily clues in a fun, tongue in cheek manner, dropping over-the-top hints whilst being careful never to mention anything ‘officially’ Olympics related. All our audience had to do was guess who the person of the day was, then use that as a promo code in the Uber Eats app, with successful guesses receiving 50% off their order. Timeline - short-lived campaign during the 2020 Tokyo Olympics campaign. Placement - daily online video and social media content on Twitter, Line and Instagram that dropped the ‘name’ clues, as well as owned channel support (CRM, in-app) and an influencer strategy.

List the results (30% of vote)

With just $238,000 USD in paid spend (including influencer budget), the campaign generated: 8% increase in acquisitions during the campaign period. 3% increase in total orders and revenue during the campaign period. 35% increase in social platform followers Total reach: 19,826,870, one-third of which was organic (4.88 million) Engagement rates: 10% Instagram, 2% Twitter Codes sold out within 3 minutes each day.