What’s more difficult than starting a dialogue about natural pet food with busy consumers on the go? Resisting the guerilla cuteness of Bernie and Pumpkin!

Hill's®
Science Diet® Nature's Best®
Demographic Targeting, Lifestyle Intercept, Event Marketing

Challenge
In 2008, the five-year-old Nature’s Best brand was completely relaunched, shifting from bright colors and cute food shapes to a focus on real, high-quality ingredients backed by the strong nutritional reputation of Hill’s. Because research showed that most pets actually preferred the taste of Nature’s Best over competitive natural foods, the brand wanted to get samples into the hands (and bowls) of as many consumers as possible.

Solution
As you step off the subway, you spot a "Lost Pet" poster in the window of a coffee shop. You're a pet owner yourself so you take a closer look. Mysteriously, the poster shows two adorable plush pets and only describes the food they prefer.

The next day, you come across another poster. This time it asks "Have you seen us?" and you start to see the pets everywhere. They're peeking out of flowerbeds, climbing telephone poles and staring back from storefronts. Now you're constantly thinking about pets and pet food; you know something's going on and you want to know what it is.

The next afternoon, everything clicks. Right there on the sidewalk is a wooden cart that looks like it's AWOL from the local farmers market except it's populated by the plush pets from the posters (you notice the original posters have been replaced by a Nature's Best-branded "Found" version). As you put the pieces together, a friendly brand representative asks about your dogs and hands you a free bag of Nature's Best for them to try.

INNOVA flooded eight major "natural" markets with Nature's Best sampling teams, delivering several million samples. Teams grabbed consumer attention with custom wooden farmers market-style carts and sampling activity was always preceded by the two-day "Lost Pet" teaser campaign.

Consumers were very interested in the information, which provided and opportunity to interact with consumers for several minutes on average. This lengthier interaction created valuable connections at events, retail, vet clinics and dog parks.

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