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How we got 1,227,190 views for Toy Station with 40+ influencers in Dubai and Abu Dhabi
Toy Station is a children’s toy store in Dubai and Abu Dhabi. The brand had low awareness among its audience — so we put it where families and kids already spend time: in the feeds of creators they follow on Instagram and TikTok.
3 months
with the content
over 3 months
Meet Toy Station
Toy Station is a children’s toy store operating in Dubai and Abu Dhabi. At the start of the project the brand faced low awareness among its target audience.
The second task: increase engagement and sales through social media. The project needed influencer activity that would build awareness and, at the same time, support engagement and sales.
From low awareness to 1.2M views
Toy Station had low brand awareness among its target audience and needed to increase engagement and sales through social media. Each problem got its own answer.
Toy Station on InstagramLow brand awareness
Families in Dubai and Abu Dhabi didn’t know the store well enough. The brand needed to appear in content that parents and kids already watch and trust — not only in ads.
Two creator portraits that match the audience
We defined family lifestyle creators aged 20–45 and children bloggers aged 5–15 — with suitable and inappropriate topics for each group, so every collaboration stayed on-brand.
Engagement on social media
The brand needed people to interact with it, not scroll past. One repeated, ad-like format would quickly feel like advertising — and stop working.
Three formats creators can make their own
Home unboxing, store review and lifestyle fit — so Toy Station appeared in different creator scenarios while staying relevant to each influencer’s audience.
Volume without one-off posts
To support sales, the brand needed a steady flow of content across Instagram and TikTok — not a campaign that depends on a single creator or a single post.
A 150+ creator pool and a paid + barter mix
We built a database of 150+ relevant influencers, reached out via social media and combined 7 paid and 42 barter collaborations with store credit in both models.
Five steps before the first collaboration
Before launching influencer collaborations, we structured the campaign around the brand’s initial challenges, relevant creator profiles and content formats.
Define the challenge
Increase brand awareness, social media engagement and sales.
Influencer profiles
Two core creator groups for the brand.
Content topics
Family fun, gift ideas, shopping reviews; unboxing, toy challenges, gaming vlogs, store visits.
Collaboration formats
Three core content approaches.
Influencer pool
A database of relevant creators and outreach with collaboration proposals.
Two influencer portraits, one brand
Family lifestyle
Children bloggers
Matched to what creators already make
We also defined inappropriate topics for each group, so collaborations remained aligned with the brand.
Selection was built around the content each group already produced: family lifestyle profiles focused on family fun, gift ideas and shopping reviews, while children bloggers were matched with unboxing, toy challenges, gaming vlogs and visits to entertainment centers and stores.
The influencer portraitThree formats — not one repeated ad
Home unboxing
Products are introduced at home — in the creator’s everyday family setting.
Store review
The physical Toy Station store becomes part of the content.
Lifestyle fit
Toy Station is integrated into a broader lifestyle scenario.
Different ways to show the brand
Instead of one repeated collaboration format, we developed several ways for influencers to integrate Toy Station into their content. The brand appeared in different creator scenarios while staying relevant to each influencer’s audience.
A database of 150+ relevant influencers
From a list to an active creator pool
We built a database of more than 150 relevant influencers and reached out to them through social media with collaboration proposals.
This gave the campaign a structured creator pool and let us select influencers whose content and audiences matched Toy Station.
Dubai · gift ideas & shopping reviews
Abu Dhabi · unboxing & toy challenges
Dubai · family fun
Dubai · gaming vlogs
Abu Dhabi · store visits
Every creator in one place
Profiles, audiences and outreach status were tracked in a single database — so selecting the right creators for each format was systematic, not random.
Database of 150+ influencersWe collaborated with 40+ influencers
Creator volume → content volume
As a result of the outreach, Toy Station collaborated with more than 40 influencers, who published more than 50 pieces of unique content.
The campaign was not dependent on a single creator or a single execution: Toy Station appeared through multiple collaborations and content pieces across social media.
Toy Station in dozens of feeds
Products, store visits and real moments with toys — published by creators to their own audiences, with Toy Station as a natural part of the story.
40+ collaborations · 50+ pieces of contentReels and TikTok from creators
Reels from influencers
Short-form videos featured Toy Station products and in-store experiences — a dynamic format suited to social media discovery.
Reels gave influencers space for product-focused and in-store video while keeping Toy Station inside the creator-led strategy.
TikTok videos from influencers
Creators produced videos around store visits, products, hauls and toy-related experiences, reaching audiences on another short-form platform.
The TikTok executions carried the strategy beyond Instagram with the same core themes: products, shopping experiences and creator interaction with the brand.
Best publications on Instagram and TikTok
Same engagement, different reach
Despite the difference in views and likes, both publications recorded the same engagement rate — influencer-created content brought Toy Station to creator audiences on Instagram.
Reach plus interaction
TikTok contributed both reach and audience interaction — extending Toy Station’s influencer content to a second short-form platform built around store visits, products, hauls and toys.
Paid + barter collaborations
Two models instead of one
The influencer budget was allocated across two collaboration models: 7 paid collaborations based on an influencer fee plus store credit, and 42 barter collaborations based on store credit for each influencer.
Combining fee-based and barter arrangements supported a much broader mix of collaborations — with store credit as part of both models.
One program, two ways in
Rather than relying on only one partnership model, the campaign used both fee-based and barter arrangements — 7 times more collaborations than paid partnerships alone would have delivered.
Paid and barter collaborations1.2M views. 13K engagements.
Campaign activity continued across the full three-month period rather than being concentrated in a single month — reach and engagement kept adding up from April to June.
Views, cumulative
Total views of influencer content, adding up month by month
Engagements, cumulative
Likes, comments and other interactions, adding up month by month
April delivered the highest number of views and engagements, and the highest monthly engagement rate in the campaign.
views of influencer content in 3 months
interactions with creator content
overall ER over 3 months · April peak 3.08%
influencers collaborated with Toy Station
pieces of unique content on Instagram and TikTok
relevant influencers in the database
Calculated: 1,227,190 views ÷ 49 collaborations (7 paid + 42 barter). On average, each collaboration added about 25,000 views.
The right creators, the right formats
The campaign was built around influencer profiles that matched Toy Station’s target audience — so the brand appeared naturally in creators’ feeds instead of looking like an ad.
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