Subway Sink a Sub

Role

Concept and ideation, creative and experience design direction, product owner and manager

Challenge

In a crowded fast food market, increasingly dominated by a king, a clown and a colonel, Subway needed a way to increase customer engagement, breathe fresh life into their brand, and drive sales of their most iconic brand asset: the footlong sub.

 Idea

A swashbucklin’, loot-winning, digital gaming experience where sinking sub sandwiches is the name of the literal game. With Subway’s famous brand asset at its heart, we created an immersive retail campaign that was designed and built to ensure every player won their stake in over $40million worth of treasure, and had them returning to play again and again and again. It was supported by a 360° integrated campaign set on the high seas that drove customers to the online at-sea battleground.

Design

We started with a completely blank canvas and designed the gaming experience from end to end. Starting with the Octalysis Gamification framework, I lead the experience team to develop the gaming framework to ensure users would engage and return to the game again and again. We then worked on algorithms to determine the right game board size.number of shots a user received, when to give free shots, and when to push products. User flows and wire frames were developed to ensure the experience was simple and seamless on the front-end, but smart and sophisticated behind the scenes. Leading assets production and interface design, I then made sure the team created a visual design language that was fun, playful and engaging, whilst keeping Subway brand front of mind.