- Layburn has been driving working as a UA lead for Trailmix and helping to keep Love & Pies on top
- “Be curious, try and make sure that, regardless of what department you’re in, you understand what’s happening in the other teams”
Get Industry News In Your Inbox…
Sign Up Today
In our Developer Stories series we go behind-the-scenes to get a personal take on studio’s success story. After starting out at King, Philippa Layburn found UA fame as part of the Trailmix Games team, working out of their London office on their launch smash, Love & Pies.
Founded by ex-King team members behind Farm Heroes Saga, Trailmix’s mission is to create games with richness and depth, which remain accessible, long-lasting and built to fit into a player’s daily life. As part of that story Layburn has been driving UA, working as a UA lead for the company and helping to keep Love & Pies on top.
In recognition of her achievements and the game’s success, Layburn was awarded our Mobile Games Awards Rising Star accolade in 2023!
We caught up with her to find out what’s been going on since her big win, what tips she can give to anyone hoping to emulate her success and what hopes and dreams she has for the year ahead.
PocketGamer.biz: Beginning at the beginning: How did you first get into games?
I previously I worked for a digital advertising publishing house in ad ops where we worked with various entertainment and fitness publishers like Soundcloud and Map My Run and sold ad space to clients. I was really keen to move to the client side, rather than working as a middle man or closely with publishers.
So I saw a performance marketing role at King – which became my first games job – on LinkedIn, and of course I recognised the epic Candy Crush Saga, as I was an avid player at the time. I jumped at the chance to work on a product I was so familiar with. I took the opportunity to interview for the role and the rest is history.
What’s your day-to-day like at Trailmix?
I am a user acquisition lead so my day-to-day involves a lot of planning, strategising and hands-on campaign operation. If I’m not looking at campaign data, typically I’m in a creative brainstorm, a data meeting where we’re uncovering new dashboards and insights or a product meeting chatting all things feature uplift. Otherwise, I’m probably thinking high level about the quarter’s budget or goals.
What are you working on right now?
Right now I’m working on Love & Pies, our merge-2 mobile game with a compelling narrative and gorgeous graphics. I’m looking at optimising our channel mix so as to buy more efficiently. That means dropping our CPIs and increasing our ROAS. There are also some exciting new projects for the Trailmix team that I’m beginning to support.
What was your first brush with the Mobile Games Awards? And what was it like winning our Rising Star 2023 award?
We were nominated for two awards. Our game Love & Pies was nominated for Game of the Year and Trailmix was nominated for Best Developer, so I knew about the awards through this. I had no idea that I was in the running to win an award myself as, for the first time, the awards were chosen by industry experts rather than votes.
“Joining Trailmix in late 2021 has afforded me some really cool opportunities.”
Philippa Layburn
Winning was incredibly exciting! Joining Trailmix in late 2021 has afforded me some really cool opportunities, and being part of a small but lean team I began to work on projects I’ve always found super interesting.
For example, I became really interested in how UA managers should run creative tests, and interpret creative test results. Some of this work became the basis of why I won the award and it felt super fulfilling to have something I was so passionate about be recognised at such a prestigious level.
How has the last year been for you? Any highlights?
Throughout the year I had many really cool achievements like becoming a Mobile Hero, and speaking on panels and podcasts! It was an amazing time all round!
The last year has continued to be really great. I’ve been working on Love & Pies and some exciting new projects! Highlights would include moving from Senior UA manager to UA lead, working on a super exciting Love & Pies creative project in Q1 & Q2 – watch this space! – spearheading Trailmix’s retargeting activity, and hosting my very own industry learning sessions on topics like retargeting and best practices for UA relationships with product teams, as well as more generally networking with industry folks.
Then there’s been supporting Love & Pie’s YouTube and socials by being the face of player facing content.
Do you have any advice for anyone wanting to work in games? Any tips for breaking into the industry?
My general advice is to take all opportunities that come your way, even if they scare you! There’s a reason they’ve come to you, and it’s because you can do it.
To break into the industry you need to be interested in games and play games yourself! I remember at entry level getting asked “How do games make money?”, answering correctly, and being told, “OK, good, you’d be surprised how many people get that question wrong”.
I believe showing that you play and are interested in how they work will stand you apart from other candidates.
But my main advice is to be curious, try and make sure that, regardless of what department you’re in, you understand what’s happening in the other teams. The more you can see how the puzzle pieces come together, the more interesting your own job becomes, and the more you contribute towards the success of the game overall.
Be curious about your own work too. Why are you doing things the way you are? Is this the best way?
What would you like to achieve in the coming year?
“It's always flattering to see your ad concept copied by rival games, so if that's happening I know we're doing a good job.”
Philippa Layburn
This coming year I want to continue driving growth for the UA team in two main areas.
The first is data excellence. That is creating the right dashboards and team to help us with campaign management and game insights. Plus onboarding any tools that can help with the automation of any manual tasks and make data output easier.
The second part is creative excellence. That’s ensuring that we’re ahead of the trends, whilst creating ads that cut through the noise and align with our players’ interests.
I hope this time next year, we know our audience on a deeper level than today. Plus it’s always flattering to see your ad concept copied by rival games, so if that’s happening I know we’re doing a good job.
Lastly, I would like for all new projects to be built on strong UA foundations, research, processes and expertise and to be thriving! Along with Love & Pies, of course! In fact, why not give it a try, download here!
