The Cannes Lions Media Grand Prix was awarded Wednesday night to Uber Eats' "Build Your Own Super Bowl."Los Angeles-based ad agency  Special is credited with the idea, Omnicom’s PHD handled media placement and Biscuit Filmworks produced.  

The main idea: Uber Eats reconfigured its commerce platform, and one week before this year’s Super Bowl fans were invited to navigate to the app and create their own Super Bowl commercials. By doing so, they unlocked special deals for food delivery on Game Day, the biggest day of the year for food delivery services. 

For two years, Uber Eats had been cheekily suggesting in a host of ads that the Super Bowl was created to sell food.  Users going to the app  chose "ingredients," unlocking different scenes, jokes, and celebrity casts. 1000+ combinations were crafted to work seamlessly.  

These fan-made films lived in the app and were shared across media, bringing new fanbases into the conspiracy -- and into the app.  

According to Uber Eats, the effort paid off with record-breaking Super Bowl week sales:  

-- Smashing the previous sales record by over $36 million 

-- 3.7 million incremental app visits Super Bowl week 

-- $290 million-plus earned media value (~30% higher vs. previous best ever) 

- 325,000 users participated in "Build Your Own Super Bowl Commercial"

- 800,000 minutes spent in the ‘Build Your Own Super Bowl Commercial’ experience 

- 38% deal redemption - 10x more effective conversion than past promotions 

- The experience was particularly effective in driving trial and re-engagement. Over 40% of the users engaging with the experience were not regular users  

Media Lions Jury president Sindhuja Rai, Chief Client Officer, WPP Media, APMEA, commented: "This is modern marketing at its most transformative. Rather than using communications to drive consumers to the product, it turned the product itself into the communications platform – seamlessly uniting creativity, media, technology, talent, commerce, and personalization into a single connected experience, effectively collapsing the traditional funnel. The result was a campaign that didn’t just capture attention; it converted participation and engagement directly into business growth." 

In addition to the Grand Prix, seven Gold, 16 Silver and 21 Bronze Media Lions were awarded from 1,432 entries this year. 

Media Network of the Year rankings, based on the total number of awards accumulated at the festival, were:

1. Carat
2. OMD Worldwide
3. PHD Worldwide