A screen comes to life. A child with a superimposed face of Dog Man places a group call to their Kinzoo friends. When kids answer, GIFs and stickers of the superhero fly across the screen. 

That’s one experience kids can have on Kinzoo Messenger—a free social media messenger app that connects kids via talk, text and games. Designed for kids and families, it has been downloaded more than a million times in a dozen-plus countries (including the US, Canada, the UK and Australia) since its 2020 launch. CEO and founder Sean Herman says he created it to fill a hole in the market for safe social media apps for kids. 

Kinzoo Messenger monetizes through a combination of in-app currency (which can be used to buy stickers featuring third-party characters), brand partnerships and a paid subscription tier that rewards subscribers with exclusive stickers and wallpapers. 

While it’s admittedly not as well-known as platforms such as Roblox, Discord and Instagram, popular IPs have successfully reached kids on Kinzoo, including Rovio’s Angry Birds (an activation for Angry Birds MakerSpace season three racked up 423,000 opt-in engagements), Paramount Pictures movie If (455,000) and Universal Pictures’ The Wild Robot (269,000). 

And its latest activation for the January 31 release of Universal Pictures’ Dog Man included a “Path”—a content channel that fans subscribe to in order to get daily brand-based messages including the movie trailer, jokes and sharable GIFs. Kinzoo also launched branded wallpapers to use in chats, and a face filter so users can look like the film’s canine hero in pics. 

Kinzoo’s Dog Man wallpapers for kids’ conversations.

Running from January 24 to February 24, the Dog Man campaign was off to a good start when Kidscreen interviewed Kinzoo’s chief marketing officer Dave Matli on day 20, with 321,000 opt-in engagements—a much stronger result than the typical return brands can expect from traditional advertising that kids just scroll by, says Matli. He goes on to explain that Kinzoo engagements are more significant because they represent a true opt-in—in which kids actively seek out and engage with the branded content bu doing things like subscribing to a Path, for example. 

The platform works with brand owners to develop custom content, and it typically takes about three weeks to create all of the materials for an activation, according to Matli. This quick turnaround time is another selling feature of the platform. 

It also helps that the app is differentiated in that it gives kids the choice of what brands they want to see and engage with in the app, says Herman, adding that “as traditional channels increasingly face regulatory scrutiny, Kinzoo provides a secure and captivating alternative.”