Case Study: How Pedigree's Friendship Day campaign turned into a brand banter

This case study explores in detail how on this Friendship Day, Pedigree decided to bring focus back to a person’s most loyal friend by using other brand's comment sections. Conceptualised by 22feet Tribal Worldwide, the '#YourMostLoyalFriend' campaign utilized other brand’s friendship day posts to achieve brand engagement.

Category Introduction

The pet food industry is a growing market in India, even more so now that the awareness around animal care and food has become more relevant. And Mars Petcare, being one of the oldest brands in the industry, enjoys the largest market share.

Brand Introduction

Pedigree operates in the pet food industry. Revenue in the Pet Food market amounts to US$0.6bn in 2023. The market is expected to grow annually by 12.96% (CAGR 2023-2028).

Summary 

Pedigree took the occasion of Friendship Day to highlight the fact that a dog is a human's true best friend. The brand hijacked the comment sections of friendship day posts of brands like Maggi, Cadbury, Airtel Porter, etc. by reminding the brands who everyone’s most loyal friend is - a dog. The comments caught the attention of some major brands and even got them to become friends with them, sparking conversations across social media. 

Objective 

The objective was to make space for canine partners on a platform that is quite accurately owned by dogs and yet when it comes to topicals, dogs are not really seen around. So, the task was simple – bring the focus to the most loyal friend by engaging with other brand’s Friendship Day posts to deliver the brand’s message of Friendship Day for all.

Brief 

To organically make space for pets on the platform, which is abuzz with them, without going the generic route of topical posts or promotional ads. And to do it in the most canine way possible, cutely and playfully. 

Creative Idea 

To achieve that objective, the brand decided to skip celebrating Friendship Day on their page alone and instead go over to around 50 brand comment sections engage with them on their posts, and share a dog’s POV.

They chose the comment section because while the audience watches and likes content, only the true best friends hype you up in the comments section. Every time someone posts content, it's the besties who take to comments and unabashedly hypes you up. As a human's true best friend, the comments section became the undisputed choice to remind everyone of this pious friendship.

Challenges 

As the brand wanted to drive conversation with other brands, nothing was pre-planned for them. The uncertainty of what the other brands would do was a challenge.

Execution 

It started with a Friendship Day story where the brand announced on its page that they were on its way to making friends.

They skipped filtering posts based on the industry or theme that they were going to engage with. The brand targeted all the Friendship Day posts. Engagement was seen in pages like Coca-Cola, Emobois, Policy Bazaar, Mobil and others. 

They began by scouring Instagram to look for brands that spoke about Friendship Day. Post Pedigree's comments, a lot of brands happily accepted the 'friendship' and organically decided to respond to the comments.

Results

Pedigree got over 20 brands to engage with them, including Coca-Cola, Cadbury, IKEA, etc. The story received 43% more traction than any other story on the page in the past 2 months

Madhur Khanna, Marketing Director,  MARS Petcare India said, “Who better than your most loyal friend to celebrate Friendship Day with! We went on a doggo friendship spree to make as many new online friends as possible. It was heartening to see the response and the fact that we ended up with a lot of new friends for Pedigree."