Case study — UNA AI

Turning an AI assistant into a character.

Intro

UNA is Unity Environmental University’s AI companion, designed to help prospective students understand the university’s programs, navigate signup and ultimately become students.

I developed the creative concept around UNA, including her character, visual identity, narrative and social campaign.

Role
Creative LeadCreative Direction
Services
Creative conceptCharacter designCampaign developmentPaid socialProduct storytellingInteractive experience
Status
Live2026

The challenge

“Meet our new AI assistant” isn't exactly a very exciting social campaign.

The idea

Give people a reason to care about UNA before asking them to use her. So we made her a dog.

The outcome

A character people could meet, then a product they could actually talk to, straight from a TikTok ad.
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The work
The challenge

The product had a clear job. People still needed a reason to care.

“

“Meet our new AI assistant” isn't exactly a very exciting social campaign.

The product had a clear job, but I wanted to give people a reason to care about UNA before asking them to use her.

So we made her a dog.

The idea

Once UNA became a character, we could build a story around her.

Once UNA became a character, we could build a story around her rather than simply advertise another AI tool.

The campaign was planned in phases: first tease her, then reveal her, then let people interact with her.

01 — Teasing UNA
Phase 01

We started without showing her.

A series of short videos introduced UNA through small clues, gradually revealing more of her character without showing the full picture.

The final video was the reveal.

  • Forest

  • Shadow

  • Eye

  • Meet Una

02 — Meet UNA
Phase 02

A static campaign built around her character.

Once UNA was revealed, I built a static campaign around her character.

The creative mixed university messaging with science, pop culture and internet references, from “Making fetch happen” to “Searching for a degree?” and “Your new sidekick just dropped.”

The visual system was built around Unity’s green and cream palette, topographic lines and, obviously, a lot of dog.

03 — From character to product
Phase 03

The next step was making UNA interactive.

TikTok ads allow prospective students to start chatting with UNA directly from the app, taking the campaign from simply introducing the character to letting people actually experience what she does.

Tap the gold sticker in the mobile to start – everything is live!

FollowingFor You

it’s 11:47 pm and you’re googling “can I actually afford college” again so ask the dog.

@unityenvironmental

Una never sleeps. Ask her the question you’ve been too nervous to ask an admissions office 🐾 #financialaid #collegetok #firstgen

original sound - Unity Environmental University
Explore Unity with Una
Una

Una’s still awake.

Every answer she gave you has a real page behind it.

Apply now → Ask the real Una →

Tap the gold sticker to start · everything below is live

The journey

The broader acquisition journey is:

Ad→Website / UNA→RFI→Application→Registration

UNA interactions are also tracked through GA4 alongside other conversion activity.

Performance
9,253
Website leads, Meta campaign
4,188
Completed registrations
35%
Lower cost per lead, video vs single image

One of the strongest video executions generated 1,213 leads at $48.52 CPL, with $58,857 in spend.

What I did

Creative concept

Created the idea of UNA as a dog and developed the character around it.

Creative direction

Defined the visual language, narrative and social executions.

Campaign development

Built the teaser, reveal and ongoing social phases.

Paid social

Developed creative concepts and executions for static and video ads.

Product storytelling

Turned an AI assistant into something people could understand and remember.

Interactive experience

Extended the character into TikTok's interactive ad format, where people can actually talk to UNA.
The bit I like

The easiest way to advertise an AI assistant would have been to tell people what it does.

We decided to give them a reason to meet her first.