At Banfield Pet Hospital, we are here for the lasting health and happiness of pets. In a year when Americans were asked to stay-at-home, quarantine and distance themselves from others, pets provided much-needed comfort, company and love. Pet ownership skyrocketed, and time and time again we saw articles and posts to the effect of, “Adopting [PET] was the best part of 2020.” For our holiday campaign, we wanted consumers to recognize and associate our brand with this silver lining.
Although the 2020 holidays couldn’t involve the usual parties or travel, we knew this was a golden moment to show our furry friends some appreciation and find a way to celebrate without leaving home. Tapping into existing cultural habits (who doesn’t love a cheesy family holiday photo?), we asked pet owners to celebrate their pet in a holiday photo and tag Banfield with #bfullofcheer for a chance to win a year of preventive care (an Optimum Wellness Plan™) for their beloved pet.
To help grow the campaign’s reach, we activated influencers (including whitelisted ads), associates, partners and followers to post fun photos of themselves with their pets on both Facebook and Instagram, all relating to the holiday spirit! So, whether it’s ugly sweaters, a holiday card featuring your furry friends, a sing-a-long, or something else, we wanted pet-owners to celebrate pets and “bWeird”, “bFun” and “bFestive”! We had the best time celebrating pets - the ones that have been there for us and have helped get us through an unprecedented 2020.
In the last six weeks of 2020, we ran this holiday photo contest on Facebook and Instagram. Using the theme “Holiday Spirit,” we invited pet owners to join our celebration of our furry friends by posting a picture depicting them and their pet getting into the Holiday Spirit using the hashtag #bfullofcheer. Photos had to fall into one of three categories: “bWeird”, “bFun” or “bFestive”! The “b” is an ongoing Brand icon that stands for the “b” in Banfield and represents our perspective of these three words in conjunction to the love we have for pets.
To garner interest and awareness of the campaign, we created signage for each hospital that could be visible at client drop-off, promoted in our blog and consumer emails, and on social, launched with posts from carefully selected influencers. To kick things off, we produced a set of fun pet holiday photos in a stylized photoshoot to help users embrace the 3 b’s: bWeird, bFun and bFestive.
Our handpicked, pet-loving influencers (such as @KittenXLady, @Thecatphotographer and @POPEYEthefoodie) all enthusiastically took part in the initiative on their own socials, driving awareness to the contest and promoting our brand. In addition, we developed an internal-facing campaign for Banfield Pet Hospital associates and veterinarians to spread cheer and encourage them to join in on the fun. The campaign and influencer activity took place across both Facebook and Instagram.
User-generated content emphasized our pledge to bHere for our pets this holiday season and beyond. Six winners were chosen from thousands of submissions within a 6-week period and gifted a year of Banfield Pet Hospital’s Optimum Wellness Plan (OWP).
Messaging throughout the campaign was upbeat and welcoming, and we invited our entire community to participate in the holiday FUN. The external goal of the campaign was to encourage our audience to be bWeird, bFun, and bFestive. Internal goals were to increase brand affinity and sentiment; and drive traffic to get a free first visit on the campaign landing page on our website through paid social efforts.
During the duration of our #bfullofcheer holiday campaign from November 24th, 2020 to January 1st, 2021, we received over 7,000 entries and an amazing collection of holiday photos featuring people and their pets. We repurposed this user-generated content during the 6-week campaign flight to further promote the contest and spread the much-needed cheerful pet content that our campaign created.
The #bfullofcheer campaign reached 3.6M users, generating 4.2M impressions overall, and garnering over 7K submissions.
Organic engagement rate (by impression) was 3% throughout the duration of this campaign.
Although Facebook organic attained slightly higher volume (more impressions, reach, and engagement), Instagram engagement rate was greater. (FB 1.5% vs IG 5.1%)
Influencer posts further enhanced performance by adding 1.5M impressions and 294K engagements to the campaign with an engagement rate of 19.1%.
To wrap up this campaign we picked six finalists who were gifted with a one-year OWP plan and will hopefully spread positive word of mouth on their social profiles when they receive petcare in the upcoming year. Our wrap-up post with the winners: https://www.instagram.com/p/CKWtekUA3pY/
