Instagram Arcade

The internet can be a toxic place, but it doesn’t have to be. While I was working at Wieden+Kennedy, Instagram tasked us with creating a campaign to promote well-being on the platform. We wanted to promote kindness while discouraging bullying and other toxic activities.

I worked with art director Cassandre Gouraud on a series of short films that promote positive Instagram behaviors. We were also tasked with creating experiential activations so we built an arcade console that turned Instagram positivity into a video game.

We brought the battle against online bullies and trolls to life with a fast-moving game inspired by Space Invaders.

Online negativity was illustrated with a range of aggressive emojis which could only be defeated by heart emojis. Those heart emojis would then transform the middle fingers into peace signs and thumbs up emojis. As the gameplay demonstrates, only positivity can conquer negativity on social media.

The team at Wieden+Kennedy designed and built the machine in-house and they even let me be the first person to test it.