A new campaign from Just Eat and Live & Breathe aims to shake up student life across UK campuses at the start of the academic year. 

‘Hey U Up’, targets students across key university cities this Freshers’ Week. The initiative, which runs from late September until 10 October 2025, brings Just Eat’s energy and irreverence to the heart of UK cities including Manchester, Liverpool, Birmingham and Nottingham.

Central to the campaign is a bold neon orange Just Eat phone booth, placed on campus to tempt students with sultry “food craving” whispers and the catchy ‘did somebody say’ jingle. 

Inside, participants use a touchscreen menu to select their favourite treat and are rewarded with playful audio monologues tailored to their choice. 

Each experience finishes with a voucher for discounted orders and a helping of Just Eat-branded freebies, with hidden cameras recording candid reactions for the brand’s social channels. The activity is supported by digital out-of-home (DOOH) media placements across universities. 

Drawing directly on student feedback, Live & Breathe created the campaign with PrettyGreen, who produced the live activation, in response to an appetite for authenticity and humour. ‘Hey U Up’ delivers a bold and shareable experience as an antidote to generic Fresher’s Week tactics like free tote bags and forced mingling.

Joe Mitchell, account director at Live & Breathe, said, “Students are one of the most valuable yet hardest-to-reach audiences for delivery platforms. With ‘Hey U Up’, we’ve created a disruptive activation that cuts through the noise of campus life, rejects the tired tactics every other brand uses during Fresher’s Week and delivers a genuinely engaging experience. It gives Just Eat a fresh way to show up, while providing real value through vouchers and app sign-ups.”

“For first time students, moving away from home and their first weeks at university in a new city can be daunting,” added Richard Burgess, head of local at Just Eat, “but a very exciting time. We wanted to add fun to their first few weeks on campus with an activation that plays to those late-night food cravings as well as fills their cupboards with Just Eat branded merchandise.”

Originally published by Marketing Beat.