Two startups aiming at wildly different crowds are rewriting the go-to-market playbook by shunning social ads and meeting users where they already congregate. One appeared at Taylor Swift stadium concerts to connect with teenage girls. The other embedded its product directly onto prison-issued tablets to help those who were reentering the workforce. What they are doing suggests a larger trend as founders seek attention in venues where algorithms cannot totally predict or price.
Guerrilla Reach at Taylor Swift Stadiums
The well-being app for girls, Luna, found its central problem soon after launching: It was founded by adults. Instead of over-indexing on paid social, the team jumped in a van and took to the road, visiting schools up and down the U.K. to hear feedback directly from users they wanted to serve. That discovery loop blurred into action. Students who chewed on the team’s ideas became co-creators and ambassadors, shaping features and content while constructing their own peer-driven distribution engine.
The big swing was offline. Understanding that Swift’s stadium gatherings hone their audience by the tens of thousands, Luna set up on-site activations — creator-led meetups, QR-driven sign-ups and community moments that translated directly into app installs and content creation. According to Ofcom, smartphone ownership among 12–15-year-olds in the U.K. is over 90%, a key detail that’s liable to turn eyes-on-real-life encounters into instant touchpoints. The result: less noise, more trust and conversations teens actually want to be a part of.
It’s old-school experience strategy with a Gen Z spin. Studies, as cited by Event Marketer, continue to confirm that brand experiences lead to greater recall and intent (particularly for younger audiences who are less trusting of slick ads). By seeding ambassadors and creating rituals where the fans already were, Luna effectively turned a touring pop spectacle into a rolling, opt-in funnel.
A Hiring Lifeline on Tablets in Prison Systems
Untapped Solutions hung a hard right to reach the people harmed by the justice system. Instead of pursuing broad exposure on social networks, its founder, Andre Peart, concentrated on distribution inside facilities and with reentry agencies. The company secured partnerships across a network of providers, so inmates could view profiles, receive training and connect with employers on tablets inside correctional systems. “We are in almost every prison system,” Peart said. “If you’re on a tablet, you already have Untapped.”
It is a wedge to liberate the last mile in reentry tech: access. The Bureau of Justice Statistics has estimated that nearly 600,000 people are released each year from prison in the U.S. Dozens of states now use tablets for education, communication and to access some services via vendors, including ViaPath (formerly GTL) and Aventiv’s Securus. Through a lack of complementarity with the devices, and by organizing a coalition between reentry groups — all while launching a national convening to align employers and services — Untapped turned distribution into product. Studies from RAND and the Brookings Institution have already established that access to education and employment is connected to reduced recidivism, a sign that placement platforms behind bars can promote measurable social benefits.
Why Paid Social Is Failing For Niche Audiences
Both narratives are two sides of the same market reality: it has gotten harder to buy performance on paid social at scale efficiently. On iOS, campaign signal loss due to the post-ATT environment throttled targeting and attribution, causing customer acquisition costs to increase in many categories. WARC, Merkle and AppsFlyer all reported rising CPMs and noisier conversion paths on large platforms, which have startups diversifying channels far earlier. For niche or sensitive segments — teen mental health, justice-involved job seekers — the credibility gap of social ads can also multiply the math problem.
In comparison, high-intent, high-density times and utility-first distribution have cleaner economics. Stadium activations collapse discovery, social proof and installs into a shared experience. Prison tablets collapse the funnel by placing the marketplace where the job seeker already is. None of those [channels] are cheap, but both trade media dollars for relevance and permission — things performance budgets can’t always buy.
Playbook Takeaways for Go-to-Market Teams
Start with access, not impressions. Luna gained entry by co-building with students before ever showing up at events. Untapped gained access through an earn-in approach, by being built into institutional workflows and by bringing together stakeholders in control of scale. In both instances, distribution was built around the user’s physical context rather than around a platform auction.
Instrument trust as a KPI. For Luna, that is ambassadors and creators as trust-carriers; for Untapped, it’s partnerships with reentry agencies and presence on tablets that signal job legitimacy to both users and employers. With trust as the binding constraint, weakly targeted ads seldom move the needle.
Consider events and utilities as owned channels. Stadiums and tablets turn into reusable surfaces once matched with measurement: QR flows per section, on-device completion rates, employer response time and longitudinal results. This is where modern MMM and uplift testing — sponsored by companies like Nielsen and Analytic Partners — can confirm what last-click can’t.
The larger lesson is not that social ads are dead. It’s that for hard-to-reach or high-skepticism audiences, the fastest road to acceptance could be through a stadium concourse or a secure tablet login. Founders who design for those realities are finding a “second tweak” of traction where the feed can’t follow.
