Digging up Lily's Garden: Why did a mobile puzzle game have such weird ads?

A woman sitting blissfully on a vibrating laundromat dryer. A faked pregnancy test to dump a bad boyfriend. In 2019, the internet was abuzz about bizarre ads for a mobile game called Lily's Garden. The ads were only about 15 seconds each, but they evoked a whole universe of drama amongst a cast of zany characters that inspired countless YouTube videos and copious internet chatter.

The thing is... the story in the ads had almost nothing to do with the story in the game. In this episode of Endless Thread: creative differences, the wilderness of mobile games, and where the Lily's Garden game-world and the ad-world diverged.

Show notes:

This content was originally created for audio. An auto-generated transcript is available on Apple Podcasts and Spotify. Heads up that some elements (i.e., music, sound effects, tone) are harder to translate to text.