Lions and Tigers and Penguins: How Agency Allionce Group Specializes in Brand Partnerships With Zoos

Zoos and aquariums reach nearly 200 million people per year.  

By Kyle O’Brien

Small agencies can’t be everything to everyone. With limited staff and resources, small shops must find what they do best and concentrate their energies to gain success.

Allionce Group is the epitome of a niche agency, but one that has found roaring success by concentrating on helping brands and marketers reach and engage with those who visit U.S. zoos and aquariums. The Boston agency has grown by working with two top brands, Mondelez and General Mills, at places associated with joy and learning, with the ability to reach families as they enjoy their time together.

The specialization in those two institutions has allowed Allionce, which was named one of Adweek’s Fastest Growing Agencies list in 2020, to be a gatekeeper of sorts, as its staff understands the venues better than other agencies and gives access to only the right brands for those venues. In addition, the potential audience reach at zoos and aquariums is better than at most major sporting events. According to a 2018 study by the Themed Entertainment Association, zoos and aquariums attracted 195 million people, as compared to 134 million for Disney attractions and 70 million for Major League Baseball. That means that one small Northeast agency has a near corner on close to 200 million people, which is why big brands seek out Allionce.

“The team at Allionce are absolute experts within the zoo and aquarium space,” Todd Midura, senior vice president at Nutella North America told Adweek. “They were able to recommend specific zoos and timings to help us address strategic objectives. Their in-depth knowledge and direct connections into the zoos also helped us tailor our program to best fit the events calendar of the particular zoo.”

Bringing a sports mentality to zoos

Allionce Group founder and CEO Mark Giovino was immersed in the sports marketing world before starting Allionce in 2015. He was a college assistant basketball coach before he became an account executive in sports, first helping brands connect with students as part of a team that launched Microsoft Windows 8 on campuses. He later worked at the team level with international soccer club AS Roma as director of global partnerships. Traveling got the better of him, however, and he wanted to spend more time with his family, so he took his sports marketing skills to the birds, tigers and elephants.

As a new father, he thought about where brand marketers might go to reach new parents with young children. With some research he discovered the astounding number of people who visited accredited zoos and aquariums in the U.S. A deeper dig found that there were no players in that market.

“That was the inspiration to launch a business, adding a level of sophistication that you might find with professional sports partnerships, sponsorships and marketing,” Giovino told Adweek. He took a page from his college playbook and already had connections to brand partners, so Allionce built itself organically, but with the ability to scale up with brands like General Mills and Mondelez.

How brands integrate with zoos and aquariums

Nutella was a perfect fit for Allionce and its zoo partners. The hazelnut-chocolate spread brand wanted to show how it makes breakfast special, so it worked with Allionce to create a “Breakfast with the Animals” experience at 10 zoos across the country. Families were invited to have breakfast at the zoo, learn how to make animal-shaped pancakes, get up close with some animals and take exclusive guided tours. The events were promoted on zoo-owned digital channels and all events sold out.

“Breakfast with the Animals really helped us communicate our brand message of special breakfast by putting Nutella in the middle of a fun, experiential event. Zoos and aquariums also remain a relatively uncluttered space from a branding perspective, so the Nutella brand wasn’t lost in a myriad of branded messages, which is often the case with other experiential events,” said Midura, adding that partnering with Allionce allowed the brand to reach its target in a space where families create lasting memories together.

Nature Valley, a General Mills brand, also found success at the zoo level.

“Allionce has really good established relationships with these zoos and aquariums across the country that are able to really get the brand in through the front door,” Josh Arnold, former head of experiential at General Mills, now working for Weber grills, told Adweek.

Nature Valley did several activations with Allionce, including creating branded snack kits for kids and helping recycle wrappers and cartons on behalf of zoos. What impressed Arnold about working with Allionce was how they kept the zoos’ interests in mind. Arnold said Allionce would give pushback if ideas didn’t suit the zoos and would make suggestions about what markets would work best for certain ideas.

“They really represented the parks, the zoos and the aquariums on a level that provided a deep dive of information to us…and they were also able to kind of kill ideas that weren’t in our best interest,” Arnold said.

Getting through the pandemic

Covid-19 disrupted a majority of the marketing world, and it certainly shut down zoos and aquariums for a while. Lucky for the zoos and Allionce, being outdoors presented opportunities for people to remain distanced while still getting family time.

“Zoos were the one of the first venues to recover, because they’re naturally so well designed for social distancing. When the whole world stopped in March, for at least a couple months, no one was sure what to do. And if you fast forward four or five months to really August, September, believe it or not zoos were setting attendance records,” said Giovino.

Allionce’s zoo and aquarium partners also were able to set up animal webcams and digital assets to use for educational purposes to help stay top of mind for consumers. While aquariums were slower to reopen, they were also connecting with fans through digital means.

As Allionce continues to grow, it knows its core competencies are through “moments marketing”—special moments between parents and kids where memories are made, which Giovino said leads to stronger brand love for both the venues and the brands involved. Still, after just six years in business, he knows the agency is just scratching the surface of what they can do.

“I think we’ve continued to establish trust and credibility on both sides with our zoo and aquarium partners, but even more so with the brand marketing community,” said Giovino.

The agency is admittedly small and not a full-service shop, but it often works with the creative agencies of the brands it works with to create success. “We’re not a creative agency, we are admittedly more of an experiential agency with the capabilities of doing things well beyond experiential,” stated Giovino.