AR FILTER · CREATIVE-TECH · SOCIAL
Happy Ads collapsed the boundary between AR filter and mobile game. On Snapchat, Sting Energy's AR experience let you run through a branded world using your face.
The Challenge
Sting Energy Drink — PepsiCo Pakistan's market-leading energy beverage — needed a digital format that communicated 'energy' as a felt experience, not a stated claim. Every energy drink ad in Pakistan shows the same visual vocabulary: extreme sports, speed lines, neon, explosions. This saturation had made the category's own creative language invisible to its target audience.
The brief was to find a format that made the audience feel energised through the advertising interaction itself — not by watching energy being depicted, but by expending it. A passive video format showing Sting's energy brand values was insufficient. The format needed to create the psychological state that Sting promises.
The creative constraint was Snapchat's Lens Studio framework. Any solution had to maintain Sting's brand identity throughout and be engaging enough to drive replay.
The Solution
Happy Ads built the Sting Runner — a face-controlled infinite runner game embedded within a Snapchat AR Lens. Using facial landmark tracking, the user's face controlled the runner character: tilt left to move left, tilt right to move right, tilt back to jump. The game world was built entirely in Sting's brand palette — an energy-charged environment populated with Sting visual cues, collecting energy icons and dodging obstacles.
The format merged two entertainment modes that Snapchat users already loved — face-filter selfies and infinite runner games — into a single brand experience. The face-control mechanic had an additional social dimension: watching someone else play the Sting Runner filter through their selfie camera was inherently entertaining, driving organic sharing.
With 21 Behance community views and recognition as one of the most innovative filters in Happy Ads' portfolio, the Sting Runner represents the technical ceiling of what AR filter creative can achieve — combining game mechanics, facial tracking, branded world-building, and social sharing.
Key Results
First
Game-in-AR-Filter in Pakistan
Face
Controlled Runner — Tilt to Move
Snapchat
Lens Studio — Facial Landmark Tracking
Infinite
Runner Game Inside AR Filter
Key Insights
01
02
When someone plays the Sting Runner on Snapchat, their face controlling a runner character in a branded world is visible to anyone watching their screen. The gameplay creates a social spectacle — watching someone tilt their head to dodge obstacles in a Sting Energy game world is entertaining and shareable. Friends watching want to try. Every person who plays the filter in a social setting becomes a demonstration for the people around them
03
The Sting Runner's branded world — environments, obstacles, collectibles all built from Sting's design language — creates a more durable brand association than a filter that places a logo in the corner. The player is inside the Sting brand world for the entire game session: every obstacle dodged, every energy icon collected is a brand touchpoint. This immersive world-building produces the kind of salience that a 30-second pre-roll cannot replicate.
