Superdrug asked us to deliver a social media influencer campaign to coincide with their new Mother’s Day and Self Love Day communications. The health and beauty retailer was updating their POS and digital communications with their Mother’s Day messaging and they wanted to use our in-house influencer division - N2Ocial - to extend the messaging and get audiences to see Superdrug as the destination for Mother’s Day and Self Love Day essentials. The pre-determined hashtag was #MakeSureTheBossIsHappy –and it was our job to make that our own…
Driven by insight and experience,our team built on Superdrug’s request for a straightforward influencer campaign, developing the idea of a pet influencer campaign.
The idea focused on the evidence that pets are often considered the head of the household (not the Mum!).We used this notion to cut through all the Mother’s Day posts being pushed out where the focus was of course the mother figure. Culturally, we’ve always been a nation of animal lovers, with 17 million households in the UK having a pet and 3.2 million of them acquired since the start of the Pandemic. So for us, it was a great way to break through and get our client heard on Mother’s Day.
We carefully sourced and booked seven pet influencers – from dogs to rabbits – who ‘posted’ about their human ownerand their pampering regimes during that celebratory period. With a combined social following of 377,000, we chose pet influencers who would help us reach the objective of cutting through the noise.
We had previously managed theinfluencers for Superdrug and Unilever’s partnership on Pride, where we had Carl Cunard’s pet featuring in the video. It’s success provided us withinspiration and we decided to incorporate it into this campaign. It had proven that pet sand social media work well together naturally, and social media has always thrived on content that pulls at the heartstrings, makes us smile and creates feel-good scrolling, which pets provide. This all formed the basis of what we developed.
The pets were sent products to include in their posts, and the result was an eclectic mix of videos featuring pampered pooches and their owners.
A competition encouraged engagement,where social media users could show their pets as the boss of the household and show them taking the time to treat their human to be in with a chance of winning a spa retreat for the human parents and a hamper full of pet treats and toys for the real boss!
“With such a distinct Mother's Day point of sale campaign we needed a social media campaign that brought this to life and played up on the relevance of the campaign. The campaign felt fresh, drove sales, and put a smile on our customers faces.” Gemma Mason,Head of Marketing at Superdrug
The rise of the Petfluencer has come at a time when consumers can be cynical of human influencers claiming that each ‘paid partnership’ product is “the best”.But with pets, the idea of an animal endorsing a product is so far-fetched it actually becomes humorous, whilst still raising brand awareness and feel-good associations. And the results we achieved with this campaign highlight how effective the pet influencer can be!
