Universal Marketing Group — an opportunity development company. Something’smissing.
Sometimes it’s an idea.
Sometimes it’s the business behind the idea.
Sometimes the idea is already there — but nobody knows what to do with it.
That’s usually where we come in.
Every visible outcome has an invisible beginning. Long before anything is announced, someone has to notice it could exist. That part interests us most.
We recognise opportunitiesbefore they become obvious,connect what’s missing,and help bring them to life.
Companies, brands and rights holders across North America and Europe bring us in to do it with them.
01 / Questions
We like questions without easy answers.
- 01
Can an everyday behaviour become a product?
- 02
Can an existing piece of IP become something audiences haven't experienced before?
- 03
Can changing who pays completely change a business model?
- 04
Can a physical space become an entertainment format?
- 05
Can an audience support a business without becoming the product?
- 06
What turns a good story into a production somebody will actually finance?
02 / Range
We’re not very good at staying in our lane.
Over the years, our work has crossed entertainment, film, technology, advertising, mobility, e-commerce, consumer products, licensing and live experiences.
Not because we set out to cover a list of industries.
The ideas took us there.
And in each of them, someone chose to work with us to develop what the idea could become.
The industry matters less than the shape of the opportunity. If yours isn’t on that list, the pattern still transfers.
Film
Technology
Commerce
Entertainment
IP.
Advertising
Live Experiences
Consumer Products
03 / Process
An idea isn’t good just because we like it.
There’s an idea.
- 01
Who wants it?
- 02
Why?
one possible answer ↳ No.
- 03
Who pays?
- 04
Who owns it?
one possible answer ↳ Wrong approach.
- 05
Why now?
one possible answer ↳ Not yet.
- 06
What already exists?
- 07
What’s missing?
- 08
Who needs to be involved?
- 09
Does the maths work?
This might work.
Build it.
04 / Involvement
What happens when we get involved?
Sometimes we’re brought in. Sometimes we start it ourselves. The work looks the same.
We take the idea apart.
Before anything gets built we look for the assumption the whole thing rests on — and try to break it.
We figure out the business.
Structure, ownership, costs, margins, timing. What has to be true for it to stand on its own.
We find the missing pieces.
Rights. People. Technology. Production. Financing. Distribution. Marketing. Partners.
And if it still makes sense, we help build it.
Sometimes that means a few weeks of structuring. Sometimes it means years of operating it with the people involved.
Scope follows the opportunity, not a retainer. Some engagements are a few focused weeks of structure; others run for years. Both start the same way — one conversation about what’s actually missing.
A project is rarely just a project.
Projects are rarely made by one person or one discipline. They happen when the right pieces connect — rights, audience, positioning, financing, partners, distribution, technology, timing.
Almost nobody holds them all. We connect the ecosystem an opportunity needs to move.
01 / The thing itself
Rights
IP · Technology
02 / Who it's for
Audience
Positioning · Experience
03 / What makes it possible
Financing
Partners · Commercial Model
04 / Whether it holds
Viability
Distribution · Timing
05 / Trigger
When does someone actually call us?
Nobody wakes up wanting a partner. Something is stuck first. Here’s how it usually sounds — examples, not the full list.
- 01If
You want someone who has actually done it.
ThenWe bring two decades of building, launching, winning and getting it wrong. Judgement earned in the market, not pulled from a template.
- 02If
You want to test something without pulling your team apart.
ThenWe run it outside your machine. Contained, controlled, no internal reshuffle required.
- 03If
You need a team now and a permanent one later.
ThenWe operate as interim management, then hand it over running — structured, documented, staffed.
- 04If
You’d rather nobody knew it was you yet.
ThenWe develop it discreetly. Another name, another front door, the same rigour.
- 05If
You want the capability without building the department.
ThenWe become a long-term outsourced arm for one opportunity, run as if it were ours.
And every other situation where an outside view changes the answer — fresh input from people who have actually done the work for decades.
What you don’t get: a theorist with a big ego explaining your own business back to you. Workshops and decks we can do too — they’re just never the point.
If any of that sounds close to your situation, you know what to do next.
06 / Definition
So what exactly is Universal?
Universal develops opportunities.
Companies hire us to develop opportunities they can see but can’t yet build — and to find the ones they can’t see yet. Startups, established brands, rights holders, mid-size companies.
Some begin with us: a gap, an overlooked asset, a connection nobody has made yet. Others begin with a conversation — a brand, a rights holder, an idea already in motion.
We’re not consultants handing over a deck. We work inside the project along with your team — for as long as the agreement requires — doing the work ourselves or alongside your people, whichever you prefer.
Whether the opportunity starts with us or arrives with you, the work is the same: identifying the missing pieces and bringing together the people, resources and structures needed to make it real.
Then why Marketing Group?
Because that’s where we started.
Universal Marketing Group was founded in 2007.
The work changed.
We kept the name.
07 / Evidence
What does that look like in practice?
Six anonymised examples. Some are running, some are still being built. Details stay with the people who own them.
- 01Mobility · Advertising
A billboard that drives itself around the city.
Fully branded vehicles were the easy part. The hard part was keeping them on the road. Wrapping a car-sharing programme around the fleet solved it: the drivers came for free, day and night, seven days a week, into every corner of the city an advertiser actually wants.
Status: Delivered
- 02IP · Film
Rights that had been asleep since the 1960s.
A celebrated mid-century novel with film rights tangled across a web of stakeholders. Six years of untangling and clearing later, it is being structured as an international English-language production for a streaming audience.
Status: In development
- 03Technology · Advertising
Product placement that stops being a guess.
Brands pay to appear in film and then estimate what it did. We are building the measurement layer instead: scene-level interest, product lookups, and the path from a moment on screen to a completed purchase.
Status: In development
- 04Music · Commerce
A music brand with drinks but no shelf.
A global music brand had the beer, the wine and the rum, but no proper route to European customers. We built the store, the fulfilment and logistics behind it, and the marketing that keeps it selling.
Status: Six years and running
- 05Live experiences
A second night on a stage that is already built.
One of the world's great orchestras plays a single annual open-air concert in a palace garden. The stage, the crew and the infrastructure sit idle the next evening — so we are developing that evening: one global music icon a year, on the same stage, with the same orchestra.
Status: In development
- 06Commerce · Franchise
A Canadian food franchise built to cross the Atlantic.
In 2010, the brand had about 20 locations in and around Toronto and the beginnings of a franchise system. We helped structure the model, make it attractive for Europe, and build the strategy and setup needed to take it overseas. Eight years later, with more than 450 locations, it went public — cleanly, completely delivered.
Status: Delivered
Different industries, same pattern: find what's missing, then build it with the people who own the opportunity.
Current Thinking 01
What if selling more isn't the same problem as creating more demand?
Distribution can hide a lot.
08 / Origin
Andreas Kotal
Founder
He’s been building things for two decades.
Companies. Strategies. Ideas that became businesses. Work with major international brands and entertainment IP. And, because apparently that wasn’t enough, he also teaches entrepreneurship at the Vienna University of Economics and Business (WU Vienna).
Still has trouble staying in his lane.
09 / People
Nobody builds an opportunity alone.
We work with people who can see around a corner — and know how to get there.
None of them stay in their lane either.
10 / Evolution
- Advertising
- Mobility
- Entertainment
- E-commerce
- Licensing
- Consumer products
- Film
- Technology
- Live experiences
- Opportunity
Development.
Current Thinking 02
At what point does developing the deal become as important as developing the story?
Creative freedom has prerequisites.
11 / The receipts
75+ Projects that made it
past the question.
19 Years of developing
opportunities.
9 Industries.Because one was apparently not enough.
Current Thinking 03
How far can an established property move before familiarity becomes a constraint?
Recognition helps. Until it doesn't.
12 / Interest
What are we looking for?
Things we haven’t seen before.
Whether it becomes a paid engagement or an early conversation.
- A script with something unusual in it.
- An overlooked piece of IP.
- A strange business model that might actually work.
- An artist with an idea that isn’t the obvious extension of their brand.
- A technology looking for the right application.
- An experience people would actually leave home for.
- A problem everybody has accepted because “that's just how it works.”
Or something we haven’t thought of yet.
Something to develop?
Tell us what you’re working on.
Whether you have a defined brief or an opportunity worth developing — same starting point.