SECTOR:
MOBILE / TELCO
YEAR:
2020
ROLE:
CREATIVE DIRECTOR
THE CHALLENGE
challenge.
Mobile advertising has an attention problem.
Every brand is making the same promises: coverage, savings and flexibility, and most end up sounding identical. Xfinity Mobile needed to communicate three distinct product features without producing three pieces of content people would immediately scroll past.
THE IDEA
the idea.
Turn the ad into the game. Build it natively inside Pinterest. Make the product message the mechanic.
Three mini games, each using Pinterest’s own Pin button as the controller. No redirects. No “click here to play.” The game was already in the feed.
Switch ’n Save: steer a rocket ship and collect coins, wrapped around Xfinity’s switching and savings message. Got You Covered asked players to connect a network of aliens across the screen, mapping the coverage story. Mix ’n Match had players pairing data orbs to build a planet, mirroring Xfinity’s flexible data options.
Each game translated a product truth into something you had to do, not something you were told. The feature wasn’t explained. It was experienced.
CAMPAIGN FILM
WHY IT WORKS
why it works.
The insight underneath it is sharp: Pinterest’s audience browses with intent. Unlike most social platforms built for passive consumption, people arrive on Pinterest wanting to find something. That active mindset is rare. It is almost entirely ignored by standard display.
Layer in the audience data: Pinterest skews two-thirds female, and women make up 70% of mobile gamers, so the format stops being a creative idea and starts being a media strategy.
The restraint matters too. These are thirty-second games, not full experiences. Single mechanic, single message, one satisfying interaction before the thumb moves on. The temptation in gamification is to over-engineer. We didn’t.
THE IMPACT
Three product messages delivered through gameplay: zero copy required.
96 million monthly active Pinterest users at time of launch.
Zero redirects. The full experience lived inside the platform.
Platform-native mechanic: the Pin button as game controller.
