Tearing It Up with Caviar's Miguel Campaña for Uber Eats
By Chandler Atton & Anthony Vagnoni
What does your average Uber Eats order look like? Some food, maybe clothes or other groceries – how about a home-shredding rock star and a fierce panther?
Caviar's Miguel Campaña had been with the company for just a week, and he already secured the job to direct two hilarious Uber Eats spots, succeeding their celebrity-driven mix-up campaigns with cameos from pop-rock sensation Avril Lavigne, as well as acclaimed actor Matthew McConaughey (who'll be appearing for the brand once again in a Super Bowl LIX spot, along with Martha Stewart and Charlie XCX). One of them is linked to an order of Advil, and the other to Pantalones Tequila. Can you guess which is which?
We reached out to Miguel to get the lowdown on what went into the production of these similar-but-very-different campaigns, as well has how his experience has been working with Caviar in the US.
What was the brief from the agency? How did you address it in your pitch and treatment?
Miguel: The ads continue a format Uber Eats has had strong success with in the past – as such, the concept was very straightforward. Our new spin was to bring as much visual fun to the project in each spot. Avril is already very funny, but we wanted to know how to make the biggest impact we could. In Avril’s case, we decided to build on her public rocker persona and destroy the bathroom.
Matthew was similar. He was not only charming but very particular in the way he moved and spoke. While we shot his ad in LA, we still wanted to bring out his Texan side. It was fun to merge the two worlds. To build out the set, for example, we asked ourselves: what would his man cave look like?
These are very brief spots, and the celebrities make even shorter on-screen appearances in both; what’s the secret to getting the gag to work quickly?
Miguel: The comedy has to slap you in the face right out of the gate, and the fun elements had to be large and attention-capturing. In both, we had a strong opening--whether that was Avril destroying her bathroom or hosting a panther in a man cave. These made the punchline even stronger.
One spot has a set coming apart, the other has what looks like a CGI panther; how did you pull these off?
Miguel: Lots of prep. One thing I like about this kind of storytelling is that every piece of set helps you understand what’s going on. We had to think about those details in terms of how to destroy them, for Avril’s ad. For hers, we had one day of rehearsal and wanted to plan the order in which the set dressing would be destroyed, which was a lot of fun. It took a day of testing alternatives to find the right part. These were physical effects, which meant no VFX besides some cleanup. The panther, however, was VFX. I try to incorporate physical effects in-camera wherever possible, so we brought a puppeteer stand-in for the panther. We also designed a close-up glove with claws, and a tail, to emulate the panther’s movements.
This campaign has used celebs in rather ironic ways – pitting Mark Hamill against Patrick Stewart, for example. These spots have a different twist, to show off the breadth of things you can order online. How did you approach this strategic shift?
Miguel: When talking about what to include with Matthew and Avril, or other personalities that are cultural icons, who they are and what they’re best known for makes a solid base on which to start building the work around them. What’s fun about these commercials is that you’re not seeing Matthew on a set—you’re seeing him in his man cave. Avril isn’t at a concert; she’s in a bathroom. Seeing them in home spaces is also a solid ground for comedy.
Your Carlsberg work with Mads Mikkelsen is a case study in getting a celebrity – one not known for comedy – to be funny in the shorter, abbreviated construct of a TV spot. How did you coax such subtle humor out of Avril and Matthew on these spots?
Miguel: It’s about getting to know each actor and being on the same wavelength as their humor, and then surprising the audience. Sometimes it’s about building on their public persona, sometimes it’s the opposite. Mads for example is an incredibly funny guy with perfect comedy timing, but people are not that aware of that since they are used to seeing him in dramatic roles.
In Matthew’s case…he’s Matthew McConaughey, one of the most talented actors in the world. We had a chat about the humor we were after and improvised from there. With Avril, as a rock icon, we started by playing her song and she hammed it up as loud as she could.
You’d just signed with Caviar in the US when you landed this assignment, yet you’ve worked with the company in the UK and Europe. What was different about this experience? What do you hope to achieve in joining them for representation in the States?
Miguel: I’ve always admired Caviar, so I was on the lookout for the work they were doing. I worked with them in Europe, and when I met the team in LA, joining was a no-brainer. It’s one of the few places in which wanting to do fun stuff goes hand in hand with honoring the craft, honoring filmmaking, etc. Sometimes that’s overlooked in commercials, but here we genuinely care about that.
I like that, when we find a script we really like, we push the creative as much as we can. Caviar excels at being a creative partner in lockstep with agencies, instead of just executing the scripts they send.
It’s also a real multiformat company which is what you want as a storyteller. Caviar is a complete production house, from film to TV to music video, as well as branded content. We are working on longer-format projects together in the future.
