Uber Eats: Get Almost Anything

What Uber Eats doesn’t deliver, and why that’s brilliant.

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Unless you’ve lived under a rock for the past couple of years (and a VERY faraway rock at that), you will have seen the myriad of vibrant green and black ads from Uber Eats. By the time the latest season of Married At First Sight Australia had finished airing, every viewer could recite the nightly ad rotation word-for-word. I didn’t watch this of course, but I heard enough about it from the CAASie.co team to do some digging. 

From out-of-home (OOH) ads, social media and digital banners, and TV collaborations with Cher, the iconic “delivers almost anything” motto is hard to escape from. While the celebrity cameos certainly do their part, it’s the combination of digital and OOH placements that really caught my eye (not just because they were everywhere I turned, although, yes, they absolutely were).

That’s why I decided it was about time to talk about their campaigns, and how they have been so successful - not just in an OOH bubble, but in their blanket coverage of every advertising medium. 

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The Uber Eats advertising campaign

Uber Eats didn’t just slap a logo on a bus shelter and call it a day - they built an entire omnichannel universe, and then made sure the OOH creative could stand on its own and play along with their digital campaign. They’re no stranger to DOOH, with more than 7.6 million ads served and 27.8 million impressions in the Netherlands alone. Following on from this, their latest programmatic DOOH campaign was no small side dish, it was the main course.

Now, for those playing along at home, programmatic DOOH is the fancy way of saying Uber Eats used data to serve the right creative, in the right places, at the right times. With a mix of train stations, malls, gas stations and urban panels, they met hungry commuters and grocery-getters right where the cravings hit hardest. Just like that, OOH becomes not just a branding play, but a behaviour driver.

So, what actually made this campaign stick? Let’s dig into the creative itself.

Proof that less copy can still speak volumes

At first glance, the Uber Eats billboards are simple. Featuring bright green backgrounds (quite fashionable, if I don’t say so myself), giant blocks of text, and some great word puns that transcend languages. No flashy food shots or melted cheese pull, and yet… you can’t not read them.

Each ad is a form of what you can’t order on Uber Eats, accompanied by puns on the level of a good dad joke. Think lighting versus lightning, Pisa verus pizza, dynamite versus Vegemite - you get the gist. The genius is while explaining what they don’t deliver, they highlight the ridiculous range of what they do.

It’s a neat little marketing sleight of hand: tell people what they can’t have in a way that makes them want everything else.

It’s not just clever for clever’s sake. These billboards are hyper-local, packed with cultural quirks and inside jokes designed to connect with passersby on a personal level. They ran at train stations, so naturally they joked about missing trains. They targeted Melburnians, so of course, they referenced hook turns and potato cake vs scallop wars.

In a sea of generic “we do everything!” ads, this approach was a refreshingly specific antidote. It subverted the usual OOH formula - no giant close-up shots, no logos in every corner, no shouty calls to action. Just dry humour, cultural insight, and a healthy respect for your brain.

Why this works so damn well in OOH

OOH is a funny thing. It’s physical, it’s contextual, and it lives in the real world, just like the people it’s trying to talk to. Uber Eats has learned how to work with that, not against it.

These ads weren’t trying to teach you the entire Uber Eats product offering. They weren’t cramming in every promo code, every grocery partner, every alcohol licence notice - instead, they just left an idea with you: We deliver almost anything. Almost is all they needed to say.

The “Yes. No.” structure found across all campaign channels is the main creative for their DOOH campaigns. It’’s punchy, readable, and oddly satisfying (especially when you’re killing time waiting for a delayed public transport service and your brain’s gone to sponge mode).

Because they kept the visuals simple and the copy clever, it made the campaign easier to flex. These weren’t one-size-fits-all designs, they were modular, adaptable, and worked just as well on a digital screen in a petrol station as they did across a giant wall in Rotterdam.

So what can you steal from this?

Let’s call a spade a spade: this campaign didn’t succeed because Uber Eats had buckets of cash (although, I mean… that didn’t hurt). It succeeded because they respected the format. They knew that to win with OOH, you have to say one thing well, not twenty things poorly.

They leaned into localisation, simplicity, and humour. They trusted the viewer to get the joke, and it worked: purchase consideration doubled, and the campaign landed in the top 15% of food delivery ads globally.

But here’s the bit you’ll really want to note: this wasn’t a shot-in-the-dark creative risk. The programmatic setup gave Uber Eats the space to test, tweak, and optimise on the go. They could serve new creatives, try different headlines, and respond to what was (and wasn’t) working, all without binning the whole campaign.

“Our programmatic DOOH campaign allow[ed] us to reach a contextually relevant audience at scale. Their audience and location data were crucial in targeting potential viewers and delivering the right message across various formats seamlessly. Additionally, the flexibility to update creatives during the campaign ensured our messaging stayed fresh and effective throughout.”

- Fadli Gunawan, EMEA Brand Media Lead, Uber. 

If you want to do the same…

Hi, I’m CAASie, and I help you do this.

With my platform, you can run a campaign just like this, without needing a global agency or a Cher budget. You can start small with a few digital screens, use real-time data to track what’s landing, then scale the heck out of what works. So if your creative team comes up with a weird-but-wonderful idea involving hyper-local food debates and celebrity stars? I say go for it.

Because here’s the thing: outdoor doesn’t have to be boring, it doesn’t have to be beige, and it definitely doesn’t have to be safe.

It just has to be smart.

If you’re ready to get started on your own “almost anything” campaign, I just so happen to know a platform that can help.