UBER EATS | BUILD YOUR OWN SUPER BOWL COMMERCIAL | 2026
Two Guys Who Broke a 60-Second Commercial Into Over 1,000 Versions / UBER EATS "BUILD YOUR OWN SUPER BOWL COMMERCIAL"
A 60-second commercial got broken apart by users into 16,500,000 seconds worth of "your own personal commercial." They basically made people build a commercial the same way they'd build a salad.
The problem
For two years running, Uber Eats had built its commercials around the conspiracy theory that "football was invented to sell food." But while DoorDash kept gaining share in the food delivery market, Uber Eats' monthly active users and downloads had been slipping year over year.
The insight
There's only so much a 60-second spot playing in front of a TV can do. Viewers are distracted by their other screens, and the ad just flows past them, one-way. So the discovery here was: what if you turned "watching" into "building"? They connected the dots between how people already pick out ingredients for a burger or a salad in the app, and the idea of picking out scenes for a commercial.
The idea
They created a section inside the Uber Eats app called "Build Your Own Super Bowl," where users picked out scenes to be the "ingredients" of their commercial, using the same kind of interface they'd use to order off a regular menu. With a star-studded cast including Matthew McConaughey, Bradley Cooper, and Addison Rae, there were over 1,000 possible combinations, and depending on what you picked, you'd unlock an actual real meal deal. Director Steve Rogers and Biscuit Filmworks handled the shoot, filming an enormous number of scenes built around a non-linear, modular structure.
What happened
Sales during Super Bowl week reportedly set a new record, up more than $36 million, with 3.7 million more new visits to the app and earned media value reportedly reaching more than $290 million. 325,000 people took part in the experience, spending a combined 800,000 minutes in it, and more than four in ten participants were not existing users. It won the Grand Prix in the Media category at Cannes Lions 2026.
Afterthought
Turning the commercial itself from something you watch into something you operate, like a product, shifting from "please watch this" to "please make this" — that's a genuinely powerful move. And because they'd spent two years building up the running joke that football was invented to sell food, this leap didn't feel like it came out of nowhere, which is impressive in itself. We've moved from an age of handing out commercials to an age of handing out the ingredients for one.
Awards
- Cannes Lions Grand Prix 2026
