There is a certain irony in paying a man who has built an empire on the culinary arts to tell people, in essence, to stop cooking.
Gordon Ramsay, the Michelin-starred chef whose television persona has long depended on the volcanic correction of other people's kitchen mistakes, has now been enlisted by Uber Eats to make a rather different argument: that cooking itself is the mistake, at least when football is on.
The campaign, which carries the title "Who Could Cook at a Time Like This?," shows Mr. Ramsay traveling door to door to berate home cooks for the sin of standing at a stove while the World Cup is being played. It is the delivery company's first global advertising effort, running across 17 markets — a considerable expansion for a brand that has previously tailored its campaigns to individual countries.
"We wanted to find the most over-the-top and entertaining way to play up a very real truth: when the game is on, people don't want to cook," said Georgie Jeffreys, global head of marketing at Uber.
The work comes from Mother, the independent agency that has handled creative duties for Uber Eats in various markets. (One imagines the brief was not difficult to execute: find a famous chef, have him yell at people, mention the app.)
The timing is deliberate. Global sporting events have long served as tentpole moments for food delivery services, which tend to see order volumes spike when large populations are simultaneously immobilized by television. The World Cup, which began this week, offers roughly a month of such immobilization.
Whether Mr. Ramsay's fans will find it amusing to watch him argue against the very activity that made him famous is, of course, the bet Uber Eats is making. Then again, he has never seemed to mind a contradiction delivered at high volume.
Original story published in The Drum: "Ad of the Day: Uber Eats taps Gordon Ramsay to discourage World Cup cooking | The Drum"