Unleashed Brands is a youth-enrichment company with a portfolio that spans everything from trampoline parks and martial arts instruction to tutoring and college prep. The company in February 2025 appointed Pat O’Toole, a former CMO of Burger King and Mountain Dew, as chief marketer to revamp the company’s advertising.
“A year ago, I would say we were 98%, probably actually 100%, in the lower funnel with very conversion-heavy tactics — search, some paid social,” said O’Toole. “We weren't building the brands and we’re weren’t really showing up in a way that resonated with moms, who are the decision makers on our brands.”
With 210 locations nationwide, the company’s leading light is Urban Air Adventure Park. The brand today, March 5, took the next step of its marketing journey with the launch of social content that is running across YouTube, TikTok, Instagram and Facebook and marks a new social strategy for the brand.
The new content uses the same tropes of familiar social media videos, including, in content previewed by Marketing Dive, a dad trying out Urban Air's pizza before his head blows up in a lo-fi explosion and a mom-versus-kid laser tag battle with the night's dinner plans at stake. It was made in collaboration with agency VaynerX, which was brought on because of their expertise in the mid-funnel.
“It's very creative-heavy and gets at some of the tensions that we have and some of the positioning that we have,” O’Toole said of the social content made with the agency. “You put it out in social and see what resonates with the consumers. You take the ideas and you build upon them, you put paid media behind what's working. So it's a different way of really approaching the space than we ever have.”
Different brands, different challenges
The broader Urban Air campaign launched in late January with a series of 15-second ads and spans connected TV, paid social, programmatic interactive video via KERV and video-enabled digital out-of-home channels. The creative presents the brand’s parks as an alternative to bad kid’s birthday parties and an option for adventurous kids.
The campaign, the first work overseen by O’Toole, was intended help the brand recruit the next generation of kids and parents as others aged out. The work is informed by insights around why families visit the brand: to get kids off screens and out of the house, and for worry-free birthday parties.
“The amount of consumer data that we have is incredible,” O’Toole said. “Everybody that comes to Urban Air gets invited to take a net promoter score survey after the fact, and we have an exceptionally high return rate on those with good quantitative and qualitative data, and all of our locations get Google and Yelp reviews. We feed that in, and we can mine those insights.”
Urban Air brought on creative studio Where The Buffalo Roam and utilized Omnicom shop Zimmerman Advertising for TV creative, riffing on the multitude of ways that birthdays can go wrong and landing on bad experiences with clowns and petting zoos.
“The creative opportunities are endless,” O’Toole said. “It's very campaignable, so you might see us continue to build on that in the future.”
After tackling Urban Air, Unleashed will focus on Sylvan Learning, a brand that is nearly 50 years old and has seen a rise in competition in the supplemental education space. The company again teamed with Where The Buffalo Roam and Vayner to figure out where Sylvan fits in the industry landscape and how it can move out of the lower funnel — a similar challenge to that of Urban Air made different by the category.
“As a marketer, I say to my team and the Vayner team: Urban Air is easy. Urban Air is super cool. Kids flying around zip lines, launching themselves off slides… the content creates itself,” O’Toole explained. “Sylvan is an intellectual challenge and a creative challenge, and I think the team's unlocking some amazing work.”
