The Westminster Kennel Club Dog Show has captivated canine enthusiasts for more than a century with nearly 3,000 dogs from the U.S. and around the world in NYC. The multi-day event featured a format where the public engaged with more than 200 breeds, spectators attended, and fans at home watched the annual broadcast.
In 2020, the club postponed the 2021 show due to the pandemic. This was the first time in the club’s 144 year history that the event would be held in the summertime, outside of Manhattan, and spectators could not attend.
In 2021, we set out to:
Introduce the new location, Lyndhurst Mansion, and its history with dog shows.
Bring awareness to the fans at home due to the special circumstances of the year with real time updates, shareable content, and interactive concepts.
Celebrate the companionship of dogs, responsible dog ownership, and breed preservation.
GLOW and Westminter teamed up to pivot Westminster’s multi-platform campaign to bring the excitement of Westminster to audiences worldwide despite the changing factors. We successfully did so by educating audiences on Westminster's new location, timing and protocols while celebrating what fans love the most: the dogs.
Our strategy kicked-off with a campaign that brought positivity to the news that Westminster 2021 was getting postponed and that the pandemic was still very much underway. We did so by launching a Westminster Celebration Week, a weeklong digital celebration taking place when the show was initially scheduled. The week of events included Westminster re-airings, a Facebook Live panel on supporting dog health, untold stories from previous winners, and a social contest for audiences and their pups at home.
Following the Westminster Celebration Week, our social efforts focused on driving awareness and anticipation for the summertime show. Our social content updated the traditional Purple and Gold creative with Gatsby-esque flourishes, Lyndhurst Castle silhouettes, bold fonts to catch your attention, inspiring music, and eye-catching photography and video of our stars, the dogs. We tested new audio formats like Clubhouse and Twitter Spaces to bring social audiences more information about the upcoming events.
Heading into the 2021 event, we were faced with the challenge of having a limited team on-site due to protocols and the event space was much larger in size than previous NYC locations. We prioritized our on-site team’s efforts to ensure content capture was optimal for audience engagement and could be used on multiple platforms.
We successfully captured hundreds of pieces of real-time social content on-site including behind-the-scenes Instagram Stories, GIFs, score cards, and lots of dog-friendly TikToks. To keep audiences engaged at home, we launched #ImWatchingWestminster and the #BestAtHomeContest where participants were featured in the broadcast. Lastly, we partnered with influencers and FOX talent to share how they were watching the dog show from the comfort of their homes.
An at home team supported the event through 24/7 community management, live-tweeting during the broadcasts, and repurposing past content. This successfully allowed Westminster’s social feeds to stay fresh and timely without compromising audience engagement.
We successfully brought awareness to the 2021 dog show and engaged audiences across Westminster’s social platforms.
Westminster's organic social content received over 10MM total impressions, 594k engagements, and 1.3MM video views during the event.
Westminster’s average content engagement rate increased by 18% compared to the previous year.
Westminster’s social contests received more than 6k participants, and the #BestAtHomeContest trended at #7 in the US on Twitter.
Westminster's Giphy channel has received more than 1.2 Billion views to date.
Westminster’s TikTok channel continues to grow rapidly with 1.3M likes and 90.5k followers.
