A sampling of some of the projects I led as Executive Creative Director at WEBTOON. This page contains many images and may take a moment to load.
Nationwide Reader Awareness Campaign
In 2022, we went big with a nationwide OOH and digital video campaign to drive broad reader awareness of the WEBTOON app. The OOH campaign ran in Chicago, New York and Los Angeles. The LA messaging, including presence at San Diego Comic-Con, was strategically placed to target the offices of local studios and streaming platforms such as Netflix. Fans and creators alike had a blast encountering WEBTOON in the wild and posting about it.
Video
The video extension targeted viewers with a high propensity to enjoy our content offerings, including anime and K-Drama fans, and also broader segments such as female and male targets. To meet our media teams’ rigorous strategy and optimize for maximum volume and views, we created several cuts to meet channel and message specifications. The team chose the song “Yes, Mom” by TikTok-darling, indie pop artist, Tessa Violet, to compliment our content with slick, confident vocals and a powerful beat drop. To make the videos we partnered with Brand New School. The campaign was a massive success with WEBTOON achieving a 5-year high in search volume during the flight.
Lore Olympus TikTok AR Filter
In Lore Olympus, Persephone occupies a duality of death and rebirth as the Goddess of Spring.
To celebrate season 3 of Lore Olympus, we partnered with TikTok to create an AR filter letting fans become both side of the goddess Persephone. In Green mythos, Persephone is the goddess of spring but also of death. She controls renewal and growth, which can spiral into wild overgrowth and violence if you incur her wrath.
To ensure the transformation was smooth with paper textures and colors faithful to the comic, we created storyboards and animations to ensure the experience felt like they came straight from the artistic, vivid world of Lore Olympus.
Storyboards
The filter in action
WEBTOON x McDonald’s at Anime Expo
We partnered with McDonald’s to celebrate WEBTOON’s 9th Anniversary at Anime Expo 2023 by throwing ourselves a birthday party. Fans were treated to a completely WEBTOON-themed McDonald’s popup at the convention featuring characters from our top titles such as, Hooky, Lore Olympus, unOrdinary, Lookism, and I Love Yoo. Fans who downloaded the WEBTOON and McDonald’s apps were treated to free swag such as an I Love Yoo poster, tote bag, and enamel pins- all exclusive to AX 2023. The booth was an enormous hit with lines snaking well outside the booth and free swag completely snapped up in a matter of hours.
Morgana and Oz Animated Shorts
Morgana and Oz is a delightfully wholesome romance by superstar creator Miyuli. We were asked to prepare animated social advertisements to promote the series. Given the comic’s potential appeal with fans of Studio Ghibli films, such as Howl’s Moving Castle, I selected the animation company Trash Studio, a collective of current and former Studio Ghibli animators in Japan.
In order to facilitate the studio pitch and subsequent production, I storyboarded the shorts in English and Japanese. Once Trash Studio was on board, we worked closely with Miyuli to understand the world of Morgana and Oz. Given the weekly publishing cadence of webcomic production, character art and expressions take precedence over the comic settings and backgrounds. In order to bring M&O’s world to life we asked for her notes on what these locations look like in her imagination, down to Morgana’s personal items in her bedroom. We also protected her vision for the characters by advocating for seemingly small things—like Oz being shorter than Morgana. (But their unorthodox height difference is our fans’ favorite aspects of the couple!) The team also selected and directed the first voices for these characters, enlisting talent currently working in anime voiceover.
Reaction to the spots was wildly positive and they collectively garnered a 3.5% higher VTR (view-through rate) and a 16.4% higher CVR (conversion rate) than Meta advertising averages.
Character sketches and a behind-the-scenes look at animation production. (Video courtesy of Trash Studio.)
