After using celebrities in its advertising (Kathy Bates in '21 and Pedro Pascal in early '23) to portray the game's characters, Merge Mansion wanted to shift focus from its storyline to the actual game itself.

Staying true to the old advertising adage "truth well told" we used a testimonial from one of its players originally shared on Merge's social and turned it into a (slightly) dramatized film.

The core target group for Merge Mansion is women 30 to 55. This is why we decided to tap into something that every single mother knows and can relate to (but won't say aloud): sometimes you just need a little time off from your family.

As more than 50 million players who have downloaded Merge Mansion can attest, the game is highly addictive.

One of those people is player-ID @janet87 who had turned to Merge Mansion’s social to reveal that she once got on the wrong bus because she was so distracted by the game.

We decided to use her story as a “real life inspired” testimonial.

At the time of submission, the campaign is still running and gathering data.

But we can say that the film has received 2.8 million hits on YouTube. Or rather a version of it. You see there are a variety of edits from the film with varying end gags which are being a/b tested across platforms.

The success of the versions is measured based on ROAS (return on ad spend). Unfortunately, that data is not handed outside of the company – even for ultra-important advertising juries such as yourself (we asked … no dice).