The encyclopedia · Marketing & Brand · Marketing decision · 2023–2024
Deliveroo turned rivals' worst delivery reviews into a prize-winning cookbook
Deliveroo collected one-star reviews of delivery disasters at competitors' restaurants and published the resulting dishes as a real cookbook.
Deliveroo
The solution
A dish is only as good as how it arrives: mixed in the bag, soaked by a drink, dropped or late, what lands on the table is often a magical new creation nobody ordered. Deliveroo noticed that delivery disasters at its competitors' restaurants were being described in vivid detail in online one-star reviews.
So Deliveroo and Dubai agency ‿ and us published The One-Star Cookbook, a tongue-in-cheek collection of 36 dishes inspired by those real reviews of delivery failures at other restaurants. Each recipe turned a customer's complaint about a ruined order into an absurd, named dish.
The book flipped an awkward category truth — delivery is fragile — into an argument for the brand that controls the delivery. It won a D&AD Wood Pencil and the ADC 103rd Annual Awards' only Gold Cube for the Middle East and Africa region, in Publication Design.
Why it worked
- Real one-star reviews are inherently funny and credible, so the idea needed no invented claims.
- The target of the joke was competitors, not customers, so it scored without alienating diners.
- A physical cookbook turned a digital PR stunt into a designed, collectible object that award juries and press could hold.
- Every dish dramatized the category problem Deliveroo exists to solve.
What can be applied
A competitor's visible failure is an asset you can productize: instead of attacking rivals, collect their mistakes, make them funny, and let the audience draw the comparison themselves.
Aftermath
The cookbook earned a D&AD Wood Pencil plus an ADC Gold Cube and two ADC Merits, and it remains one of the most awarded pieces of regional work for the UAE at the 103rd ADC Annual Awards.
Sources
- One-Star Cookbook — D&AD Awards Archive
- South African Agency Wins Silver In Global ADC 103rd Annual Awards
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