Everyone knows UNO. Making it the reason Gen Z leaves the house? That’s a challenge worth playing for.
UNO is iconic, but Mattel came to us with a big challenge: How do you transform the world’s No. 1 most talked about card game into a year-round experience platform that doesn’t just rely on sentimentality while demonstrating its undeniable cultural relevance for today’s generation?
Play brings people together, and the world is hungry for spaces where that can actually happen. For Gen Z, connection happens best in real life, but it has to feel authentic. As this generation seeks out “third spaces” beyond home and work, a vital need for community and belonging, they’re drawn to places that prioritize experience and authenticity. Instead of creating an ad campaign, we were asked to expand Mattel’s idea of UNO Social Clubs: immersive experiences designed to meet younger generations where they already gather, turning a decades-old card game into the hottest ticket in town.
We owned the process, beginning to end, carefully engineering every detail to ensure that it resonated with our audience. From venue selection in culturally rich neighborhoods to environmental design that transformed pop-ups into destinations, every touchpoint was built to feel authentic. Each stop of the tour (Philadelphia, Toronto, Brooklyn, Miami, Houston, Mexico City, Los Angeles, Tokyo, Sydney, Berlin, London, Barcelona and Paris) was deliberately dialed in to the heartbeat of its local culture with live DJs, exclusive merch drops and hyper-local programming so no single UNO Social Club, looked like the next, and that was entirely on-purpose.
