NY Times Square Takeover

The brief arrived late and the scope was enormous: take SK-II's #NoCompetition campaign — featuring Simone Biles in an animated short film called "VS Trolls" — and put it across 40+ digital billboards in Times Square, synchronized with a live launch event. Six weeks to deliver.

The timeline was not a negotiation. The media buys were locked to specific dates. Biles and journalist Katie Couric were confirmed for the live event. The campaign had to land on the day it was supposed to land, at the scale it was supposed to land, or it didn't land at all.

The Execution

Every screen in Times Square has unique technical specifications — different aspect ratios, different file formats, different delivery requirements, different media owners. Forty screens meant forty custom video edits. The creative vision had to translate across all of them while maintaining a cohesive narrative: from any angle in Times Square, a visitor needed to see one campaign, not forty disconnected ads.

I coordinated across multiple media partners, aligning the creative vision with each media owner's specific requirements. The work was granular — format-by-format, screen-by-screen — and it had to happen in parallel because the timeline did not allow sequential delivery. BMF partnered on the execution.

The Launch Event

Biles and Couric appeared live in Times Square for the campaign launch, surrounded by the billboards running the "VS Trolls" film overhead. The message — that beauty should not be a competition, that female athletes deserve to be seen for their achievements, not their appearance — played out at a scale that was impossible to ignore.

Impact

The takeover generated 320 million media impressions. Over 100 global media attendees covered the launch. The campaign secured 50+ media placements worldwide, with coverage in the Hollywood Reporter, Marketing Dive, PR Newswire, and The Cut.

It was fast, messy, and incredibly satisfying to pull off. Six weeks from brief to 40 synchronized screens in the most visible outdoor media location on earth — with a world-class athlete standing in the middle of it.