For years, Uber Eats invested in one very specific shift in perception: convincing users that the app was not intended only for ordering food from restaurants. After four years of the Get Almost, Almost Anything platform, it considers that job sufficiently accomplished to move the communication toward a different question. No longer what can arrive at the door, but what feeling remains when someone else takes another task off the daily list.
That idea led to the new global brand platform Phew, developed by Uber Eats with agency Special Australia. The name imitates the sound of relief, and it is precisely that moment the brand wants to associate with using the service when an ingredient for dinner is missing, something is needed around the house, or there simply is not enough time for another task.
The shift comes after Get Almost, Almost Anything spent four years broadening perceptions of the Uber Eats offering and was launched across more than 17 international markets. That platform had previously succeeded Tonight, I’ll Be Eating…, which marked the beginning of the now nine-year creative partnership between Uber Eats and Special.
The new starting point emerged from ethnographic research that revealed an interesting tension around convenience. Although everyday obligations and pressure on time continue to grow, people can still feel guilty about paying for a service for something they believe they could do themselves. Phew therefore presents convenience not only through time saved, but through the feeling of having one less thing to worry about.
To launch the platform, Special went backward rather than forward. The central film is set in 2013, a period the campaign calls B.U.E. – Before Uber Eats. Sam and Ollie are trying to prepare dinner, but they have to search for the necessary ingredients in the way that was entirely normal before the arrival of on-d
