A love story is timeless. When it’s done right, the stakes are clear, the audience can’t help but root for the characters to get together, and lots of moments—big and small, good and bad—help show a couple’s life together.
That’s why Uber used a love story to lead a new campaign targeting suburban riders, Georgie Jeffreys, head of marketing at Uber, North America, told Marketing Brew. The hero spot for the campaign, called “In Good Time” and created by Mother New York, uses snippets of a couple’s story over the course of a little over two minutes to show all the different ways suburban riders might use the rideshare company.
“Because this campaign centers on the everyday moments that matter, a love story felt like a natural way to show how Uber fits into all parts of life,” Jeffreys wrote in an email.
Uber is one of a number of brands like Audible, Neutrogena, and Vera Bradley leaning into romance in marketing. As Marketing Brew has previously reported, brand marketers recognize that some people want a distraction from doom and gloom, with stories of romance serving as a cheat code to making someone feel something.
Throughout the campaign, called “There Are Drivers In Your Area,” Uber uses the tick of a countdown clock—how far away the Uber driver is from the characters—as a storytelling device. That device works twofold in the hero love-story spot by also educating consumers about the speed they can usually get rides.
“It raised the stakes of it, and it gave ‘In Good Time,’ specifically, it gave it this really beautiful device,” Oriel Davis-Lyons, chief creative officer at Mother New York, said. “But it also has a really practical reason in that one of the biggest barriers for people in the suburbs is that they don’t know if there are Ubers actually available…Most people in the suburbs are no more than seven minutes away from an Uber. That’s something very practical and real that we had to kind of tell people.”
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Aside from the love story of “In Good Time,” the campaign is designed to show off Uber’s versatility to non-city dwellers. Other scenarios depicted throughout the ad campaign, including a ride to the airport or needing a larger vehicle to transport recently purchased furniture, are aimed at speaking to suburbanites; those messages will be supported through social, out-of-home, digital, and audio placements.
“People in the suburbs think about the brand a little differently,” Davis-Lyons said. “When you’re out in the suburbs and you [have] maybe one or two cars. So really it was about, how do you remind people in the suburbs of those use cases?”
Some of those ad placements use creative contextual to specific locations or contain messaging that changes depending on how close an Uber may be or what the average wait time for an Uber is in that area, Davis-Lyons noted.
Going forward, Uber will continue to lean into the idea of available drivers through stories that show how people can use the company’s services throughout their lives.
“We wrote hundreds of stories, hundreds of scripts,” Davis-Lyons said. “There’s a depth and a richness to it that feels like we’re just kind of scratching the surface.”
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