Egg Roller
- Brand
- Sainsbury's
- Year
- 2017
- Objective
- Engagement
- Industry
- Retail
- Mechanic
- Arcade & Action
- Platform
- Social
- Agency
- UNIT9
Objective
Easter is the biggest chocolate-driven moment in UK retail, and Sainsbury's wanted its own piece of the season instead of another ad. To reach a young audience, it went straight to where that audience already was: Snapchat, then used mainly by UK teens and young adults. Being among the first retailers to build a native game inside the platform also let Sainsbury's stake a claim as an early adopter of the format.
Solution
The game loads straight inside the Snapchat feed, with no app to download and no link out of the app. Players see a single Easter egg sitting in a garden and tilt the phone to steer it forward, weaving around obstacles and picking up boosters along the way. The farther the egg rolls before it crashes, the higher the score climbs. Each run ends the moment the egg hits something, and that score becomes the hook: players compare runs with friends on Snapchat and jump back in to beat them.
Results
The campaign reached 6 million people and racked up 14.5 million impressions, with players logging 928 hours of gameplay in total.
- 1
The player discovers the game directly inside their Snapchat feed; it loads within the app itself, so no separate app needs to be downloaded or installed.
- 2
The scene is a retro-styled garden track, and the player's avatar is an Easter egg rolling along it.
- 3
The goal is to roll the egg as far as possible, steering it left and right by physically tilting and moving the phone rather than tapping on-screen controls.
- 4
Easter-themed obstacles appear along the track, and the player must dodge them to keep rolling.
- 5
The farther the egg travels, the faster it accelerates and the denser the obstacles become, with speed-boosting power-ups scattered along the way.
- 6
Distance covered converts directly into score, so rolling farther yields a higher score.
- 7
Players compare scores with friends within Snapchat, which drives them to replay and try to beat each other.
