Twitter #CreativeFavorites: @Purina and @DeepFocus get pet lovers to join the conversation

Monday, 9 June 2014

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The summary (in 140 characters or less)

@Purina shows its passion for wet noses and whiskers by creating personal connections with pet lovers with the help of @DeepFocus.

The brand

@Purina is a trusted leader in the pet care industry. But more importantly, its employees are pet lovers. @Purina even encourages employees to bring pets to work year round. You could say they walk the walk, sometimes on all fours.

@Purina Director, Michael Kotick (@mkotick) explains, “There’s an incredible opportunity on Twitter. Consumers communicating on Twitter expect a response from a brand or a person. And when they get a response, it’s one of the most celebrated and enjoyable moments of their day. We’ve found a lot of power in the intersection of those two points.”

The agency

@DeepFocus, a social media veteran, operates an internal creative newsroom called Moment Studio (@DFMomentStudio) with a dedicated staff of 20 that creates real-time and longer-lead creative for brands using social media platforms. Together with @Purina, @DFMomentStudio offers an always-on approach combining rich media, Twitter Ads and a savvy hashtag strategy to showcase love for furry friends.

The strategy

@Purina based its Twitter strategy on a key insight: More than a million pet-focused conversations happen on Twitter every month — from pet care challenges to inspiring pet stories to popular memes about cute puppies and kitties. Since pet owners were already choosing Twitter to discuss pet-related topics in public, @Purina and @DeepFocus decided to let consumers guide the conversation and join when it made sense.

@DeepFocus Chief Creative Officer Ken Kraemer (@kk4i) highlights the unique engagement approach: “This was not a campaign. It’s been an always-on effort [and] Twitter is the cornerstone of our 1:1 communications strategy.”

The creative

@DeepFocus created a well-oiled machine inside @Purina that allowed them to coordinate effectively with the New York team and achieve an average response time of two hours for custom creative. @DeepFocus team members were embedded at @Purina to analyze conversations and discover topics that were trending with pet lovers. They worked with pet experts and obliging @Purina employees’ dogs and cats to craft personalized Tweets and rich media content that included Vine videos and eye-catching images.

For example, by listening to the Twitter conversation, @Purina discovered the fun hashtag #SquirrelPatrol. They chose to interact with this hashtag, selected a Tweet that had a picture attached, worked quickly to add the @Purina touch and responded directly to the user.

 

This exchange was a fun way to highlight @Purina’s passion for pets. But much of the content features expert advice on pet care from the subject matter experts at @Purina, helping out pet owners at the moment they need it.

Frequently, this expertise turns personal engagements into universally helpful 1:many moments. For example, a pet owner had a question about chewing, and @Purina saw an opportunity to translate this personal inquiry into a public conversation using Vine.

 

In this exchange, @Purina used a hashtag they created, #BetterWithPets, to connect with a pet owner and @UPS (which has over a million followers), for a bigger impact.

 The results

We dispelled the myth that Twitter is just another channel.”

Ken Kraemer @kk4i@DeepFocus Chief Creative Officer

The results of the campaign have been obvious: happy pet owners and lots of wagging tails. On a more strategic level, @Purina saw record levels of brand impact and ongoing conversion with record levels of engagement via their personal approach. After a year of ongoing conversations with pet lovers, in which they’ve personally responded to more than 35,000 Tweets, everyone involved is pleased.

“We dispelled the myth that Twitter is just another channel. We found that awesome, smart creative can be personal and intimate, while still extending the brand. Even in real time,” Kraemer explained. “We’re looking at this a year later and are thrilled with the results,” reflects Kotick. “We’re always going to be learning and evolving from this. The power of 1:1 is that we’ll never be stagnant.”

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