Merge Mansion — Granny Smith Collaboration

Japan is Merge Mansion’s second-biggest market, and the Granny Smith collaboration was the year’s biggest brand moment there — a multi-channel campaign across a Tokyo café event, in-game LiveOps, social, PR, and UA, anchored around the 4th anniversary. I led creative direction across the film and UA workstreams, and contributed creative direction across event visuals, mascot costume, decorations, and props. I traveled to Tokyo for the event and was on set throughout filming.

The strategic question was how to take a culturally specific local partnership and convert it into both community impact and acquisition value — without making the campaign feel like a thinly disguised UA play. Brand-first framing had to come first; growth had to follow as a natural consequence.

The campaign was structured as a three-wave communication arc: pre-event teaser and registration, hype during the four café days, and post-event sales and giveaway. On the creative side, I led concept development for the UA film concepts (Real life merging, Merge Mansion moments, Mascot mysteries), brainstormed and directed the teaser trailers, and gave feedback across event visuals, mascot design, decorations, and props. On set in Tokyo I directed the shoots I had concepted and reviewed the ones I hadn’t, while working alongside the partner team through tight daily reshoots.

One creative moment worth calling out separately. The Japan Special animation wasn’t my original concept, but mid-production I made a writing and stylistic pivot to take better advantage of our Japanese studio partner. I proposed reframing it as a Tokyo Noir story — strong cinematic lighting as a storytelling device paired with previously planned 90s-style retro anime transitions, 2D effects layered on the 3D animation, with Maddie’s journey from the familiar Mansion to the neon mystery of Tokyo as the emotional arc. The intent was to take the audience somewhere new within our universe without breaking brand or risking unfamiliar aesthetic territory for the US audience. The pivot landed.

The campaign delivered measurable lift across brand search, installs, community engagement, and earned media. It’s worth being honest about the framing though: this is a brand and growth program, not pure efficiency UA.

The project produced one durable creative principle and one operational one. Creatively: a campaign can take audiences somewhere genuinely new within an established IP if you find the right lever — in this case, cinematic lighting and selective stylistic choices that didn’t risk the core brand. Operationally: pairing offline-first creative with smart in-game and online amplification can drive measurable acquisition impact, but the unit economics need to be honest from the start — this is brand investment with growth tail, not UA efficiency.