UNUM Case Study: FOLKS Films Rebranding and Moodboarding

Overview

Laina Brown and her brother, Taylor Brown, are the creative minds behind FOLKS Films. The sibling duo have put their filmmaking and directing skills together to curate promotional videos, social media content, event coverage, animation, and other motion graphic services for their clients. Laina’s experience with her own photography brand, for which she first used UNUM, eased the transition into a new, growing career with FOLKS Films.

Over the past five years, FOLKS Films has shifted almost annually to reposition their services and retarget new audiences. Laina shared a glimpse into their company history, which began with weddings, to family events, to more cinematic-corporate events, to travel work, and to documentary-style projects.

Connecting with UNUM

Laina spoke on the constantly changing nature of the videography industry and customer pool in Winnipeg, Manitoba, Canada, where FOLKS Films is located. She recognized Winnipeg’s small video production community that required strategic and thoughtful marketing strategies. With this new, small market, FOLKS Films had the unique opportunity to be a leader and innovator in the local filmmaking field.

The goal of Laina and Taylor’s work remained rooted in telling a compelling, comprehensive story from the visuals to the dialog. Considering storytelling is the same driver of the UNUM platform, FOLKS Films was eager to learn of UNUM for grid organization and social channel planning. Laina had experimented with other apps but felt they were complicated and lacked video integration. 

Explicitly, Laine shared the three largest pain points driving this search:

1. Other platforms approaching discontinuation with no further app updates
2. Poor customer service from alternative platforms
3. Other platforms lacking video integration, a crucial feature for FOLKS Films

Moodboarding and rebranding with UNUM

As Laina began using UNUM for her personal photography account, she valued UNUM as “a personal mood board” and a way to better understand and explore her own aesthetic. Integrating UNUM with the marketing and social strategies for FOLKS Films opened a new door to catering their socials to their target audience(s). As Laina learned to navigate UNUM as a new marketing tool, the familiarization with her four accounts and social channels were “painless and easy” with UNUM’s customer service.

FOLKS Films primarily utilizes Instagram, Facebook, and their website for branding. Laina was drawn to UNUM’s grid planning, a feature that Laina valued for helping her share the right thoughtful messaging on FOLKS’ socials. She noted, “UNUM pushed us towards fully embracing and projecting our own brand’s story.” 

Although Laina and Taylor were now storytelling for a living, they felt they would not have done it as efficiently or effectively without UNUM. Laina praised UNUM’s scope of serving “more than just a pragmatic purpose.” UNUM’s design tools, marketplace, and blog features provided resources for Laina to be inspired and spur her creativity.

Their most recent repositioning to creating festival and travel content has only emphasized the value of UNUM, as Laina and Taylor are entering a more saturated, competitive market. UNUM’s tools helped FOLKS FIlms explore rebranding opportunities, pushing them to carry a strong brand image and message. 

Moodboarding every piece of content on UNUM’s platform made things faster and easier as they worked to determine what story they were going to tell next. Considering the FOLKS Films team is solely dependent on Laina and Taylor, UNUM filled the role of a marketing team. Therefore, Laina was able to juggle other responsibilities as UNUM saved her time and energy.

“UNUM helped us get a lot of work done for FOLKS Films without fully outsourcing for marketing and branding.”

UNUM Video

With the nature of a video-based brand, Laina had requested video integration into the UNUM platform when she was a new user. Laina was pleased and appreciative when UNUM added video uploads to grid planning. The platforms Laina had been using prior to UNUM lacked a similar growth timeline and goals of improvement. 

Laina felt confident and secure knowing that UNUM will continue to grow alongside FOLKS Films. With a growth of more than 500 new followers in the past year, UNUM has been recognized as a crucial facet of FOLKS Films’ growth picture.

“UNUM helps me be not only more productive, but the tools are far more rewarding than competitors.”