BLOGPapaya Swings Into UK Out-of-Home With a 165-Foot Stunt Above New York
Papaya's Swing OOH campaign is an outdoor advertising execution published in the United Kingdom in February 2025, created by independent agency You're the Goods, in which real in-camera stunt footage of two performers swinging approximately 165 feet above New York City was adapted for large-format digital out-of-home placements including a striking three-dimensional execution at Piccadilly Lights in London.
The campaign sits within Papaya's debut brand platform, Play On, which launched in late 2024 and positions the mobile gaming company as a champion of social, adult play. As noted by LBBOnline, the Play On platform was announced alongside the Swing campaign in December 2024, with a planned media mix spanning television, video-on-demand, YouTube, social, digital, and out-of-home channels. In the United Kingdom, the television launch aired on Boxing Day 2024 during the Manchester City versus Everton match, before the OOH phase extended the campaign's reach into February 2025.
The creative proposition centres on a single, vertiginous image: two young male performers suspended on swings high above the streets of New York City. Rather than deploying celebrity talent or an animated gaming character, Papaya and You're the Goods chose a real physical stunt as the campaign's visual anchor. The Piccadilly Lights execution translated that imagery into one of London's most prominent and commercially competitive digital advertising spaces, bringing the Play On platform directly into United Kingdom public life. As Campaign magazine's Romila Sanassy observed on 1 February 2025, the work represents a collision of creativity, technology, and cultural appeal. The Clapboard Score for Swing OOH is 72 out of 100, reflecting strong creative ambition and industry recognition set against the campaign's compact single-asset format.
Papaya positions itself as a mobile gaming company built around sociable, competitive play among adults. The strategic insight driving the Swing campaign is that mainstream gaming advertising has long defaulted to either hardcore franchise loyalty or escapist fantasy, leaving the territory of light-touch, socially motivated adult play underserved.
The global games market is estimated at approximately 261 billion US dollars in 2025, according to Ken Research, and the global video-games advertising market is estimated at approximately 14.8 billion US dollars in the same year, according to Mordor Intelligence. In the United Kingdom, mobile gaming represents a substantial and growing segment of overall digital entertainment consumption, making OOH placements in high-footfall urban locations a logical amplification mechanism for a mobile-first brand. The Piccadilly Lights site, operated by Ocean Outdoor, is one of the United Kingdom's most commercially significant digital out-of-home environments, routinely used by advertisers seeking cultural visibility at scale.
Competitors such as Candy Crush Saga, operated by King, and Roblox have historically dominated mobile gaming brand awareness in the United Kingdom through sustained television and digital investment. Papaya's decision to lead with an audacious physical stunt rather than product-feature advertising or intellectual-property-driven creative represents a deliberate departure from category convention. As CampaignLive reported on 6 January 2025, the 165-foot swing between New York buildings was framed as a metaphor for restoring play, human connection, and attention in an era of fragmented media. Dom Goldman, Founder and Chief Creative Officer at You're the Goods, described Papaya as an incredible collaborator with shared ambitions, speaking to LBBOnline. That alignment between client and agency produced a campaign structured less around product demonstration and more around emotional positioning within the adult gaming space across the UK and beyond.
Swing was directed by Nicolai Fuglsig, a filmmaker whose previous work has encompassed large-scale commercial production with strong in-camera physicality. The campaign's defining creative decision was the rejection of computer-generated imagery as the primary visual language in favour of a documented real-world stunt: two performers swinging on ropes suspended approximately 165 feet above New York City streets.
LBBOnline characterised Swing on 2 June 2025 as less an advertisement and more a piece of quiet entertainment, a description that speaks directly to the production philosophy. By grounding the imagery in verifiable physical reality, You're the Goods and Papaya created a piece of content with an inherent credibility that purely digital or animated executions would have struggled to achieve. The footage carries the visual weight of genuine jeopardy, which the Piccadilly Lights three-dimensional OOH execution then amplified through the immersive properties of the format itself.
The adaptation of film stunt footage into a three-dimensional out-of-home execution at Piccadilly Lights required VFX work to optimise the imagery for the specific geometry and viewing angles of the Ocean Outdoor site. This translation from screen to street-level spectacle is a distinct craft discipline, demanding that the original cinematography anticipate how motion and scale will read at billboard dimensions from a pedestrian perspective in central London. The Swing OOH execution demonstrates a considered integration of production planning across formats from the outset rather than a secondary repurposing of broadcast material. Uri Pearl, Head of Marketing at Papaya, stated to LBBOnline on 11 December 2024 that Papaya are champions of the Power of Play and that, like the games themselves, Swing is about adults playfully challenging each other — a statement that confirms the creative brief was built around behavioural truth rather than product specification.
BLOGNo single verified commercial performance metric for the Swing OOH campaign, such as brand-awareness uplift, footfall attribution, or download volume, is publicly available. The campaign's documented impact is instead measured through the awards record it has accumulated across the United Kingdom and international creative industry since its launch.
According to You're the Goods, the Swing campaign received two D&AD Pencils and two shortlists at D&AD 2025. The agency also reported two Cannes Lions craft shortlists for the Papaya launch work in 2025. In the United Kingdom specifically, the campaign won two Gold awards at the UK Creative Circle Awards in 2025, according to You're the Goods. This combination of recognition across D&AD, Cannes Lions, and the UK Creative Circle represents a rare trifecta for a debut brand campaign from an independent agency, and confirms that the work was judged by creative industry peers to meet the highest standard of craft and strategic coherence.
Structurally, the Piccadilly Lights execution is effective for several reasons that extend beyond aesthetic quality. The site delivers mass urban reach in one of the United Kingdom's most commercially competitive outdoor environments. The three-dimensional OOH format creates a shareable moment with organic social amplification potential, effectively extending media value beyond the paid placement itself. The decision to anchor the campaign in a real stunt rather than digital fabrication also provides the work with longevity: the footage functions as a durable brand asset that can credibly migrate across channels. For a mobile gaming brand establishing its first major brand platform in the United Kingdom, the Play On launch through Swing demonstrates that earned creative recognition can substitute for, and in some contexts exceed, the awareness value of media spend volume alone.
Papaya's Swing OOH campaign is an outdoor advertising execution published in the United Kingdom in February 2025 by You're the Goods. It adapts real stunt footage of two performers swinging 165 feet above New York City into large-format digital out-of-home placements, including a three-dimensional execution at Piccadilly Lights in London, as part of the Play On brand platform.
Swing was directed by Nicolai Fuglsig. The campaign was created by independent agency You're the Goods for mobile gaming company Papaya, and was built around real in-camera stunt footage rather than CGI, a deliberate craft choice that LBBOnline described in June 2025 as making the work feel less like an advertisement and more like quiet entertainment.
Swing earned two D&AD Pencils and two D&AD shortlists in 2025, according to You're the Goods. The agency also reported two Cannes Lions craft shortlists for the work. In the United Kingdom, the campaign won two Gold awards at the UK Creative Circle Awards in 2025, making it one of the most decorated debut brand campaigns of the year.
The Swing OOH execution ran at Piccadilly Lights in London in February 2025. The site is operated by Ocean Outdoor and is one of the United Kingdom's most prominent digital out-of-home environments. The Piccadilly Lights placement included a three-dimensional format that extended the visual impact of the original New York stunt footage into a street-level spectacle.
Play On is Papaya's debut brand platform, launched in December 2024, positioning the mobile gaming company as a champion of sociable adult play. According to LBBOnline, the platform launched alongside the Swing campaign with a media mix spanning television, video-on-demand, social, and out-of-home, with the United Kingdom television debut airing on Boxing Day 2024.
You're the Goods chose real in-camera stunt footage over computer-generated imagery to give the Swing campaign inherent visual credibility. Two performers swung approximately 165 feet above New York City streets, providing footage with genuine physical weight. Uri Pearl of Papaya confirmed to LBBOnline that the campaign was designed to reflect adults playfully challenging each other, consistent with Papaya's gaming identity.
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