Why Unleashed Brands chose VaynerX to help improve their social media marketing

Unleashed Brands, a franchise platform for kids, is beginning to change their approach to marketing by focusing more on social media. To help achieve this change, Unleashed Brands has partnered with VaynerX, a marketing and media holding company founded by Gary Vaynerchuk. In this partnership, Unleashed Brands hopes to move away from advertising based on performance metrics and instead focus on building relationships with families and children.

The new Chief Marketing Officer, Pat O'Toole, who previously worked at Burger King, is the person who came up with this idea. O'Toole wants to shift the marketing of the company to focus not only on immediate purchases but also on creating a long-term emotional connection with the brand.

The first major project for this new partnership is working with Urban Air Adventure Park, one of the largest brands in the Unleashed Brands portfolio.

Moving Beyond Lower-Funnel Marketing

Unleashed Brands began emerging from lower-funnel marketing as they started utilizing social media. Lower-funnel marketing refers to the direct response side of the advertising funnel. This includes things like search ads and paid social ads that are meant to drive an immediate conversion.

However, the more direct response ads they ran, the more difficult it became for the company to build a brand. As O'Toole explained, the marketing team focused much more on conversion than on storytelling or inspiring an emotional connection to the brand.

O'Toole also pointed out that the majority of their marketing budget went to performance advertising as opposed to building brand awareness. While these ads are effective, they often miss the value of the brand to 'gatekeeper' parents.

Understanding this, the company shifted its marketing efforts to brand building through social media. This approach enables the brand to experiment with a multitude of storytelling techniques so they can identify what resonates with the audience and use paid advertising to amplify those concepts.

Beginning a Campaign That Emphasizes Social Media

The videos created by our partner VaynerX show the fun activities that people can do at the Urban Air Adventure Park and create a big buzz.

They created an adventure park theme in a style that mimics video trends and social media platforms like TikTok and Instagram Reels.

In one video, a dad freaks out over the pizza at the park, and a clip includes a kid and mom in a laser tag game putting their dinner plans on the line.

The campaign aims to engage both children and parents and capture their attention by using fun and comedic formats that are popular on social media.

O'Toole mentions that before growing the business, they want to test different creative concepts on social media, analyze the audience response and identified which concepts are worth investing the business's resources to advertise.

Developing a More Comprehensive Marketing Strategy

Social media marketing is just one piece of the puzzle. There is a more extensive marketing strategy that includes the use of other media in addition to social media marketing. The wider strategy for Urban Air Adventure Park began earlier this year and utilizes various channels.

This includes 15 seconds ads on internet connected TVs, social media ads, programmatic interactive videos, and digital billboards. The ads showcase Urban Air parks as ideal places for kid's birthday parties and family outings.

The playful and creative messages solict family interest in bringing their kids to Urban Air locations for a birthday party instead of a clown party which is all the rage now.

As the brand's customers grow older, the campaign aims to attract new families to the brand's core older demographic.

Making Decisions with Customer Data

Unleashed Brands collects feedback from customers to help refine their marketing strategies. For example, after each visit to an Urban Air location, customers are asked to provide feedback by responding to an NPS (Net Promoter Score) survey. The company states that a considerable number of customers submit NPS surveys, which provide valuable data on customer sentiments.

The company surveys data from review sites www.google.com and www.yelp.com to obtain feedback from customers. For marketing purposes, data from surveys and reviews are analyzed to understand the motivations and behaviors that compel families to visit the parks.

Using feedback from customers, survey reviews, and data from social media, marketers can refine their messaging and develop more effective campaigns.

Integrating Other Brands

Unleashed Brands has made Urban Air Adventure Park one of its many brands. Other franchises under Unleashed Brands offer children various educational activities and skills development from playing.

After implementing the new marketing strategy for Urban Air, the company intends to apply similar strategies for brand development to the rest of its businesses in its portfolio.

Of the many brands expected to capture consumer interest, Sylvan Learning is where we see the most potential. While Urban Air offers exciting opportunities for visual storytelling, Sylvan presents unique challenges.

Urban Air is easy because the energy and excitement around the space provide a lot of great content in a relaxed environment. Sylvan presents challenges because the content needs to be intentional and focused.

Despite the challenges, the marketing team believes the difference in content should be added to the brand on the social storytelling and creative experimentation that is hallmark to most of the tutoring space.

A Shift to More Contemporary Marketing

The partnership with VaynerX is an indicator of the change in the marketing space. With increased consumption of social media and short-form videos, brands are beginning to allocate more budget to content-focused strategies.

Instead of relying on traditional advertising, they are social-first campaigns that blend brand messaging and entertainment.

Unleashed Brands has the opportunity to develop connections with families on a more personal and cultural level. The target audience is the contemporary parent and child. The goal is for families to appreciate the efforts being made and the connections being formed by the brands. Social media is a catalyst for creativity and humor. This is why it is important to develop content that is trendy and relatable to end users.

The partnership with VaynerX further underlines the role of contemporary creative agencies focused on digital and social media. These agencies focus on audience engagement, platform-specific story-telling, and content creation.

Unleashed Brands' changing marketing strategy demonstrates the shift that many companies are making in response to a digital-first environment with social media being one of the primary methods of discovery and engagement with a brand.

The goal of the company is to shift from purely performance-based advertising to advertising that incorporates a more storytelling approach within brand messaging that provides clearly defined performance metrics. To accomplish this goal, the company is partnering with VaynerX and emphasizing the need for creative social content.

As the campaign expands and more brands implement similar strategies, Unleashed Brands seeks to increase its market presence in youth enrichment. The company aims to continue attracting families searching for enjoyable, educational, and engaging activities for their children.