Finding the UK’s hardest Working Dog
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.
Impact
- Autarky’s ‘Hardest Working Dog’ campaign exceeded all expectations and over-performed against all of its original objectives
- Throughout the campaign, Autarky saw a 164% YPY growth in direct traffic to the website
- Achieved a media reach of over 3.6m with 21 pieces of influencer coverage
- Over 56,000 unique users engaged with the campaign and the brand’s social media followers also increased by 7%
- The most popular category of the competition — health and assistance dogs — brought 21,636 unique visitors to the website, with over 5,000 votes
- This campaign won two PR awards at the 2020 PRCA Dare Awards, including the ‘Consumer relations award’ and ‘Integrated Campaign of the Year’ as well as a BOC Brilliance Award for ‘Brilliance in PR/Communications’
The Autarky brand is tailored for active working dogs, and we wanted to run a campaign that not only increased brand awareness, but also acknowledged the wonderful variety of working dogs across the UK. Leopard Co were brilliant throughout the project, from ideation to activation, and the campaign was an irrefutable success.