To boost engagement during a seasonal slump, I led art direction and collaborated with the lead copywriter to develop Break It, Don’t Fake It, a Spring Break campaign for UNiDAYS that challenged social media perfection culture. I retouched campaign imagery, designed a custom typeface, and created assets across CRM, web, and paid social.
The campaign delivered a statistically significant 4% lift in Daily Active Members, outperforming seasonal benchmarks and driving strong redemption increases across participating brand partners.
My Role:
- Art Direction
- Design
- Illustration
- Key Art
- Photo Editing
Key Deliverables:
- Landing Page
- Paid Social Media Ads
- Organic Social
- Email Campaigns
- In-App Banners
Tropical Travel Instagram Ad
City Escape Instagram Ad
Staycation Instagram Ad
Testimonial Instagram Ad
Campaign Landing Page Desktop
Campaign Landing Page Mobile
The Challenge
Spring Break is a historically low-engagement period for UNiDAYS. Students are often focused on time off, not on savings or daily check-ins. We needed to spark engagement among existing members, drive Daily Active Members (DAM), and keep UNiDAYS relevant during this cultural moment—without relying on tired Spring Break clichés.
The Insight
Social media pressures students to curate the perfect Spring Break. In reality, most can’t or don’t want to meet those expectations. We saw an opportunity to validate real, imperfect, and personal ways of taking a break while encouraging students to do Spring Break their own way.
Campaign Concept
Break It, Don’t Fake It subverted typical Spring Break tropes by portraying students as dolls posed inside staged, surreal vacation sets. The visual metaphor highlighted the artificiality of social media culture while reclaiming the narrative for Gen Z self-expression.
Visual Design System
The campaign’s visual language combined expressive typography, bold color, and iconography to support modular storytelling across all channels.
I developed a custom display type treatment for the campaign by modifying the brand’s UNiDAYS Heavy font, incorporating geometric cuts, layering, and playful 90s-inspired dimension
Each Spring Break category was paired with a distinct color to build clarity and consistency:
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Staycation: used a soft lavender purple
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City Escape: featured a warm coral tone
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Tropical Travel: was set in a bright turquoise
These colors were applied consistently across themed title treatments, landing page modules, and social content to reinforce the campaign’s structure and visual clarity.
Custom money-themed icons reinforced the campaign’s savings message and added cohesion across touchpoints. They were also used in general UNiDAYS ads running alongside the campaign, ensuring consistency beyond Spring Break messaging.
Campaign Photography Before and After
I retouched each image to heighten the surreal, plasticized aesthetic, transforming real students into hyper-stylized Spring Break “dolls” and reinforcing the campaign’s satirical tone.
Landing Page UX
To create a fresh and equitable experience, the Spring Break landing page dynamically rotated between the three categories with each visit or refresh. This ensured equal visibility for brand partners and kept the content from feeling static.
Results
- 4% lift in Daily Active Members (vs. control group)
- 3.5% increase in perk engagement
- Strong redemption growth across participating brand partners
This campaign reframed a culturally loaded moment through bold satire and a modular design system, showing that smart creative can lead to real, measurable results.