Darth Vader has a useful quality for an advertiser: even at skyscraper scale, nobody needs an introduction. In March 2024, the Empire State Building became a screen for a Star Wars light show. UNFOLD helped develop the surrounding creative program, from branding and design to the experiences that connected the spectacle with merchandise. For an agency whose early calling card was the internet banner ad, it was quite a change of dimensions.
The connection is less strange than it looks. Both jobs ask a creative team to make someone care within a space that comes with rules. A browser has technical limits. A landmark has architecture. A fan has expectations. UNFOLD’s business sits where those constraints meet: making campaigns for companies with famous stories, demanding schedules and audiences perfectly capable of scrolling past.
The small rectangle was the audition
Brick Rucker and Daniel Weisinger founded UNFOLD in 2012. A Google case study published the following year described six full-time designers and developers, plus contractors, working with clients including Disney and Ubisoft. Rucker compared banners to street performers outside Broadway: smaller stages, with plenty of passing traffic.
“We believe in turning around creative quickly.”
Daniel Weisinger · Google DoubleClick case study, 2013
For Rayman Legends, the agency built an expandable ad that changed the surrounding website’s background as viewers switched videos. The complication arrived at the publisher: changing a site’s appearance for an advertisement met resistance. DoubleClick’s campaign team helped coordinate implementation. The idea needed someone to solve the handoff.
That early episode offers a useful explanation of the agency’s development. Production knowledge can earn creative permission. A client is more likely to entertain an unusual format when the people proposing it understand how to make it run. It is a modest principle, and a commercially useful one.
A famous villain, a very large canvas
The 2024 Imperial March program gave that principle a public stage. Disney Consumer Products wanted attention and retail activity around Star Wars outside a theatrical release. UNFOLD’s remit included creative development, branding and supporting collateral. A rooftop gathering at Virgin Hotels NYC brought together more than 150 media guests, influencers and VIPs, alongside merchandise from over 40 licensees.
The light show itself was a collective effort. Industrial Light & Magic created the five-minute sequence; SUPERBIEN adapted the imagery for 46 projectors; Skywalker Sound handled audio. ILM spent four months on the work. The building’s vertical shape demanded its own compositions, rather than a movie simply enlarged. That detail matters: an agency’s campaign credit can encompass an important part of a production without swallowing everyone else’s contribution.
UNFOLD reports more than 6,000 attendees over three days for the associated fan experience. The practical insight is the connection between event and product: the spectacle gave people a reason to look, while the surrounding program gave them something to explore.
The less glamorous number: 1,920
For a clearer view of everyday agency economics, look at soccer. UNFOLD says its Paramount+ production relationship spans more than five years, over ten leagues and at least 75 campaigns annually. The annual output exceeds 1,920 assets. Match schedules and player changes keep the work moving.
assets delivered annually
The agency describes organized assets, repeatable design frameworks and a 24-hour workflow across teams. Those are ordinary-sounding ingredients with an obvious purpose: keeping many advertisements accurate while several campaigns run at once. Beautiful work carrying yesterday’s information is still yesterday’s information.
This relationship also explains what clients buy. A marketing department can commission an idea, but it can also buy dependable production capacity. The second purchase keeps the first useful. For a streaming service promoting live sport, the ability to deliver another correct version on time is part of the creative product.
Batman enters the group chat
UNFOLD’s DC assignment operates across 13 business units, including film, streaming, publishing and gaming. Its approach is to use familiar characters in conversations that travel beyond established comic fandom. The agency describes ongoing writers’ room ideation and participation in current trends. One example recasts the Batman-Joker relationship through a cottage-core romance joke. Gotham, apparently, has room for a softer furnishing scheme.
The ambition is broader relevance without erasing the characters that made people care. UNFOLD’s case study reports one billion impressions, 21 million engagements and 1.9 million shares. Those figures describe attention and interaction; they should not be read as a count of customers or an amount of revenue.
Different measures of attention. Figures are not additive.
The distinction is useful for anyone commissioning this kind of work. Ask whether a campaign is meant to widen an audience, prompt conversation or produce a purchase. One successful metric does not automatically answer the other questions.
The popcorn gets a speaking part
Regal’s social brief has a different problem: why go to the theater when entertainment is already on the sofa? As its social agency of record, UNFOLD promotes films alongside screen formats, concessions and the experience of being there. Talent interviews, creator activity and event coverage provide material beyond release announcements.
A popcorn container can become a collectible conversation piece. An interview can become something a fan sends to a friend. UNFOLD reports 63 million impressions and 297,000 shares for the work presented in its case study. The creative choice is to give the whole outing a role in the promotion.
For another venue operator, the transferable question is straightforward: what do customers enjoy around the main attraction? The queue, souvenir, ritual or shared reaction might be useful material. Copying that observation requires more judgment than copying a particular meme.
One publisher does not mean one personality
SEGA’s portfolio makes the same point from another direction. UNFOLD works on titles including Persona 3 Reload, Metaphor: ReFantazio and Like a Dragon. The agency combines recurring social content with timely responses and live shoots, while preserving a distinct tone for each franchise.
SEGA’s Ryan Lacina calls UNFOLD “an extension of our team at SEGA.” The phrase is familiar agency-testimonial language, but the task gives it substance: knowing enough about separate fictional worlds to produce frequent work that belongs in each one.
For 2K’s Borderlands 4, UNFOLD’s brief included launch strategy, TikTok content, game capture and experiential ideas such as a rage room. It also supported post-production on assets from a Zayn Malik shoot. The agency reports more than 10.2 million social content views. Here, the challenge was finding new audiences while preserving the franchise’s unruly sense of humor.
What the client is actually buying
UNFOLD sells agency services through ongoing relationships and commissioned campaign work. Its public offering runs from audience research and strategy through production, media buying and optimization. For a buyer, the useful unit is the brief: what needs making, how often, for which channels, and with whose approval.
A sensible budget discussion separates creative development, production, talent or creator participation, distribution and any physical event. These are planning categories, not a published UNFOLD rate card. They help a client avoid treating a social program and a large public activation as equivalent purchases.
- 01 / AudienceWho needs to care?
- 02 / CreativeWhat will they see?
- 03 / ProductionHow many versions?
- 04 / OutcomeWhat counts as success?
The model is most useful when a client has recurring creative needs and enough organizational support to approve and distribute the work. A recognizable franchise also brings an existing store of affection. A new brand cannot assume that borrowing a famous campaign’s format will supply the same audience response.
More rooms in the same agency
UNFOLD’s collaborators include Mondo Robot for digital products and infrastructure, and Pretty Big Monster for immersive experiences. The combination becomes concrete in its Mozilla Firefox campaign recap: a website, a physical card game, a holographic experience and even a miniature rocket launch appeared within a four-month program.
The agency says the card game was conceived and produced in five weeks, with roughly 5,000 packs at TwitchCon and 24,000 expansion packs in merchandise bags. That is an unusually literal way to put a digital brand in someone’s hands.
Consumer work also includes Truly, where the agency combines social content, creators and live experiences. Its case study describes turning trends into limited-edition flavor activity and events in under a month. Together, these assignments explain its place in the market: entertainment-trained creative and production applied to brands that need participation as well as exposure.
The next expansion has a name
In May 2026, Chelsea Donsker joined as executive vice president, entertainment, following leadership roles at Trailer Park Group. Her stated remit includes expanding key art and audiovisual offerings. It is a tangible step toward handling more of an entertainment campaign.
That brings UNFOLD into comparison with established entertainment groups such as Trailer Park, whose services also span social, strategy, trailers and live experiences. Breadth alone cannot settle the choice. Relevant work, the assigned team and the ability to deliver under a client’s particular constraints make a more useful shortlist.
UNFOLD has growth credentials: its 2022 announcement reported 200 percent growth from 2019 to 2021, and Inc. lists it among its 2022 and 2023 honorees. Its published culture emphasizes collaborative execution; current openings range from account leadership to freelance creators. The consistent thread is the work between the idea and its arrival in public. Sometimes the destination is a phone. Occasionally, it is Darth Vader’s temporary address.