YouTube Red x Fruit Ninja Emmy Award Winner

Sometimes, the most effective way to promote a story is to empower others to create their own—especially when it comes to the vibrant imaginations of kids. To promote Fruit Ninja: Frenzy Force on YouTube Red, we looked inward to Google’s own family of apps for a more inspired approach. Partnering with Toontastic 3D, we gave kids the tools to step inside the world of Fruit Ninja and become creators themselves. Using the app’s 3D animation engine, they could script, voice, and animate their own adventures featuring the show’s characters and themes—transforming passive fans of the world-famous Fruit Ninja IP into active storytellers. We took the idea one step further, creating a real-world extension through a series of in-person summer storytelling workshops. Using Google Pixel devices and Toontastic 3D, we empowered kids to write, animate, and upload their own original Toontastic stories to YouTube—sharing their own Fruit Ninja stories with the world. The campaign blurred the line between title marketing and creative mentorship, using technology and community to inspire the next generation of storytellers. The activation won a 2018 Emmy Award for Outstanding Interactive Media, which is one of my proudest career accomplishments. But more importantly, it proved that sometimes the best way to tell a compelling marketing story is to hand over the keys to the audience.