Driving traffic to Autarky dog food's website

Challenge

To develop its consumer audience, we were challenged by Dodson & Horrell — parent company of Autarky dog food — to create a campaign that raised brand awareness, increased traffic to the website by 50%, and grew Autarky’s audience outside of its loyal farmer consumer base.

We already provided consultancy on PR and social media for the Autarky brand, however, this challenge was set outside of this activity as it needed to comply with HMRC 0% VAT regulations.

Solution

We launched the search for the ‘UK’s Hardest Working Dog’ — a campaign to recognise the work done by dogs across the UK through a competition which celebrated all types of working dogs.

We undertook research which revealed that many categories of dogs are described as ‘working’, beyond the traditional farming sector including security, assistance, emergency services, celebrity, therapy and sporting dogs.

The result was a competition to recognise the work of dogs across four categories:

• Service dogs
• Healthcare and assistance dogs
• Media star dogs
• Sports and performance dogs

Submissions in each category were shortlisted and nominated by a reputable organization or charity, such as Dog AID, West Midlands Police Dogs, Mantrailing UK, and Canicross Scotland.

Each category was announced on social media and tagged the organisations who nominated the dogs in the category to encourage re-shares and engagement, further increasing Autarky’s brand awareness.

The winner of each category was chosen by the public via the Autarky website to maximise website traffic, with the overall champion crowned by a panel of expert judges.

Thanks to our pet marketing expertise, we developed this campaign with the goal of driving brand awareness in mind at every touchpoint. As such, the campaign was designed to have a high news value enabling the team to launch the campaign across social, digital and specialist dog and pet-trade press and regional press too.