The archive · Advertising · Marketing decision · 2025
Life Pharmacy's Awkboards announce awkward Uber Eats pickups — item sales up 82%
When anyone orders an awkward pharmacy product via Uber Eats, billboards on the courier's route announce it — awkward-item sales jumped 82%.
Life Pharmacy and Unichem (Green Cross Health)
What it had to solve
New Zealand pharmacy brands Unichem and Life Pharmacy (Green Cross Health) had just joined Uber Eats, offering delivery of everything from medicine to laxatives, condoms and pregnancy tests. The real barrier was embarrassment — buying those items face to face was exactly what people wanted to avoid — so the launch needed to make discreet delivery unforgettable.
How it works
Unichem and Life Pharmacy, New Zealand's community pharmacy brands, expanded onto Uber Eats so customers could have sensitive purchases delivered instead of buying them at a checkout. But the offer only worked if people knew it existed — and the products most worth delivering were precisely the ones nobody wanted to mention.
FCB Aotearoa answered with 'Awkboards': digital billboards fed by two live data sets. Whenever an order of one of more than 600 flagged 'awkward' products was picked up, screens on Lumo's out-of-home network along the courier's route announced the embarrassing cargo to whoever was driving or walking past.
The stunt treated the delivery driver as the new fall guy for the customer's embarrassment, turning shame into comedy. Results followed quickly: sales of awkward items through Uber Eats rose 82%, total pharmacy sales on the platform rose 28.5%, and 26% of buyers were new to the brands' Uber Eats offering.
The campaign took the Best Use of Technology/Data prize at OOHMAA's Speccies, a Bronze Lion in Outdoor at Cannes Lions 2025, and Effie recognition.
Why it lands
- Discretion is invisible, so the campaign dramatised its opposite — public embarrassment — to make the delivered alternative feel like relief.
- Purchase data and delivery data already existed in two separate systems; joining them with geo- and time-targeted screens created a medium no rival could copy quickly.
- Shifting the embarrassment onto a paid courier kept the joke affectionate rather than cruel and made the benefit physically visible on the street.
- The measured category lifts (82% on awkward items, 26% new buyers) showed the stunt converted attention into first-time trial, not just chatter.
What it did
Awkward-item sales via Uber Eats rose 82% and total Uber Eats pharmacy sales rose 28.5%; gastro-relief products gained 48%, condoms 39% and pregnancy tests 159%, while 26% of buyers were new to the pharmacies' Uber Eats offer. The work won OOHMAA's Best Use of Technology/Data, a Cannes Lions 2025 Bronze in Outdoor and Effie recognition.
What you can take
When the benefit is discretion, dramatise the opposite: making the embarrassing moment public, in a funny way, proves the private alternative's value better than any claim.
Since then
Green Cross Health kept the data-driven, humour-led approach: in February 2026, McCann NZ (formerly FCB Aotearoa) launched 'Make Your Problems Our Problem', using sales data, regional events and pollen and UV forecasts to feed regional billboards and radio that dramatised pharmacists sharing their customers' ailments.
Sources
- 'Awkboards' spotlight when products like laxatives and lubricant are ordered through Uber Eats
- OOHMAA announces 2024 winners of The Speccies
- New Zealand's complete Cannes Lions 2025 tally
- Unichem and Life Pharmacy's new campaign puts empathy front and centre
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