College students spend $40 billion annually on food, and delivery habits form with the independence of college life. Win a student, and they tend to remain loyal for at least the next decade of adult life.
So every year, the first term is like a battleground state, with all delivery companies competing through money-off discounts and incentives. DoorDash dominates with 67% market share. Uber Eats commands massive advertising budgets across TV, social media, and influencer campaigns.
As a challenger brand, Grubhub is severely outspent by competitors investing billions in aggressive promotional warfare. In 2024, Grubhub challenged us to find a new way to cut through and drive uptake of the Grubhub+ Student loyalty program—a membership that's free for all during all of college.
The problem? Many students had no idea it existed. And those who did questioned whether Grubhub had good deals, relevant selection, or was even "a brand for people like me."
We couldn't out-spend the competition. We needed to out-think them.
To understand real campus delivery culture, we conducted a social audit of two years of student posts. One behavior jumped out repeatedly: The missed late-night order.
We commissioned research and found that 72% of students have missed a late-night delivery and woken up to it on the doorstep the next morning.
Why? College students live on their own schedules. They eat breakfast at 2pm, dinner at midnight. They're 250% more likely to skip traditional meal windows than the general population. Order data showed they over-index on late-night Grubhub orders by 150%, with 12-4am being peak hours for study sessions, social activities, and downtime.
We recognized that showing up in this moment would make students see Grubhub as a brand that truly gets them. The occasion was rooted in a human truth they'd all lived.
So we launched Snooze Insurance: a first-of-its-kind do-over meal for any college kid who slept through their late-night food delivery. An exclusive benefit for Grubhub+ Student members.
Every Saturday, Grubhub+ Student members could text "DELIVERY" to 1-844-954-OOPS to score their do-over meal. No judgment. No conditions. We launched the benefit with a fully integrated 360, earned-led campaign:
Re-targeting Social Forgiveness
To create pre-launch buzz, we targeted everyone over the past two years who had posted about missing their late-night order on social—whether ordering from Grubhub or any of our competitors. We slid into their DMs offering them a Grubhub+ re-do as an unexpected apology, driving immediate social buzz and organic advocacy before we'd even officially announced the program.
Launching With Earned
We revealed Late Night Snooze Insurance with a media-first strategy focused on key college newspapers and local news channels. Campus outlets ran headlines like "Grubhub Launches Insurance for Students Who Sleep Through Deliveries" while local TV reporters remarked they wished they'd had the benefit when they were in school: "It used to be 'you snooze, you lose.' Well, now Grubhub is looking to change that for college kids."
Targeting The Highest Indexing Greek Houses
To maximize our impact, we identified the top 50 sororities and fraternities that are best known for late-night order misses. We sent custom mailers—including one delivered atop a party keg—creating cut-through efficiency in our campaign while providing another compelling earned media angle about how data drove our targeting.
Late Night Order Influencers
We identified a network of ~40 college influencers who had actually 'snoozed' on previous orders and recruited them to become our authentic campus voices. From micro creators at individual colleges to macro partners with national reach, they shared their own relatable meal mishaps, generating 23.7M impressions with stories that resonated with their peers.
Snoozing On Campus
We treated the entire campus as media, from dorms to dive bars. We hung wild postings with our hotline number in bathroom stalls and passed out coasters in college bars during peak late-night hours. We even turned snoozing students themselves into outdoor media—staging a student asleep on campus, surrounded by Snooze Insurance pizza boxes, creating an unmissable spectacle.
Snooze Insurance exceeded all expectations, converting the most Grubhub+ Students ever this semester.
THE BRAND’S MOST SUCCESSFUL SEMESTER EVER
41% of participating students were new diners—nearly 6x higher than benchmarks from another campus promo running simultaneously.
The difference? We met students at a human moment they understood, rather than shouting another discount into the void.
As Grubhub's Director of Brand Marketing & Communications, Christopher Krautler, said: "Instead of investing in more generic promos, we invested in a human truth."
400% SURGE IN SEARCH VOLUME FOR GRUBHUB
Post-campaign surveys revealed influencer content drove a 4x increase in recall of the Student Snooze Insurance promo.
But the impact went beyond awareness:
AN EARNED-LED SUCCESS
Owned social delivered 273.1K impressions with 2.16% engagement rate (exceeding our 1.5% goal) and 74.5% positive sentiment. Influencers generated 23.7M impressions. Grubhub social mentions spiked 4x YOY on key campuses and social followers increased 400%.
The commentary said it all:
We earned 335 media placements with more than doubling our goal for each. Coverage reached 11 of 12 priority campus markets, with 100% favorable sentiment.
Delish captured it perfectly: "You know that moment when you order curly fries at 1:12 a.m., queue up a re-run, and wake up four hours later to a cold, tragic paper bag on your doorstep? Grubhub knows it too—so they built a workaround for it."
