Uber Eats Calls in the Celebs for Big Game Commercial

Which brand will take home the 2024 Super Clio for the best Super Bowl commercial? We’ll find out on Feb. 12.

Every year, a few commercials take familiar tropes and mix them together in a style that screams: Look at me! I’m a Big Game ad!

Budweiser’s 2024 entry surely qualifies. So does the work below from Uber Eats, which delivers a bunch of celebs with very selective memories.

We get David and Victoria Beckham (whose appearance was teased last week), plus halftime star Usher—in his second SB outing so far—plus Jelly Roll, Jennifer Aniston and David Schwimmer:

Famous folks. Rampant pop-cultural appeals. Nostalgia. Slightly strained humor that strives to stay on brand. Oh, yeah, that’s a Super Bowl commercial!

It’s all about making room in your head so you’ll recall the sales proposition. Like the ad says: “Whatever you forget, remember Uber Eats gets groceries.”

Amusing stuff—though hardly Ken Jeong funny. Hopefully, the star power will help make it memorable for all those Feb. 11 viewers. 

The work delivers “a simple joke that we knew we could have a lot of cultural fun with on the Super Bowl,” says Matthew Woodhams-Roberts, ECD and partner at Special U.S., which developed the campaign. “Playing with memory lets us tap into universally known moments for all the celebrities. Things everyone knows and loves about them.”

He continues: “As we thought about the things we wanted each person to forget, we were careful to make sure it was a collective memory we all have about that person or couple. For the Beckhams, we were able to play with their most recent viral moment from their Netflix documentary as the teaser, and then have fun with the Spice Girls in the Super Bowl spot. And then for the non-celebrity moments we really focused on truths we could all relate to.”

The team chose stars with cross-generational appeal. 

“Jennifer Aniston and David Schwimmer were on the most popular show in the 1990s and it is still one of the most popular shows today with Gen Z,” notes agency ECD and partner Dave Horton. “We have Jelly Roll, who is really having a moment right now. And then you have the Beckhams, who are just coming off their Netflix documentary and are in the cultural conversation.”

What’s more, “With our spot playing directly after the halftime performance, we loved the idea of having Usher forget the thing we all just watched him do,” adds Woodhams-Roberts.

Jake Szymanski directed through production house Gifted Youth.

CLICK HERE to watch all of this year’s Super Bowl commercials as they’re released.