• Pets at Home wants to get dog and cat owners out of the supermarket and into its stores
• Regional tests in Yorkshire and Meridian test time length and effectiveness
• TV profit ROI is £3.10 for every £1 invested

The challenge

Pets at Home is the ultimate emporium for pets. Its 250 plus stores provide everything an owner could want and more. Founded in 1991, its growth had been driven solely by local advertising to support new stores.

Acquired in 2004 by Bridgepoint Private Equity for £230m, the company was looking for accelerated growth in 2009. With penetration at 29%, greater sales would have to come from new shoppers.

Research revealed that boosting awareness would be enough to drive consumers into the stores with Millward Brown discovering that 72.3% of those aware of the chain had shopped there.

The objective of achieving sales growth by 5% was set and Edwards Groom Saunders calculated that a 7.7% increase in prompted awareness would convert to more than 1.3m transactions.

The TV solution

Pets at Home needed to make a strong business case for every £1 invested in marketing, so a programme of Test-Learn-Refine was created to demonstrate the power of TV.

The agency developed a programme of brand messages designed to get consumers off auto-pilot supermarket buying and into their local specialist. A combination of 40-second ads for launch and 30-second creative for subsequent bursts were used to build understanding of the full range of the Pets at Home offering.

Alongside this brand activity, supplier co-funded 10-second promotions were included after launch weeks to demonstrate the value offered.
The ads featured a series of pets: a cat, a dog and a rabbit looking through holes in the fence to see better equipped neighbours enjoying their toys. A dog owner is then seen walking into the store with his dog to select the best food.

The plan was first tested in Yorkshire, where the chain had approximately 10% of sales and a combination of TV channel regional macros enabled the agency to test and measure the response both in Yorkshire and also in Granada and Tyne Tees where C4 and Five activity would overspill.
Targeting pet lovers’ programmes such as Britain’s Got Talent and Animals do the Funniest Things, the brand used 835 ratings in Yorkshire with lower weights in Granada and Tyne Tees.

The 10-second ad promoted Hills, a specialist pet food supplier. The campaign delivered a profit on the media investment but was below the target.

After discovering that the Yorkshire stores were struggling, the plan was then revised for a second burst in both Yorkshire and Meridian.
In Yorkshire lower weights were used, with the 30-second creative as the launch execution plus a more mainstream promotion for Pedigree and Whiskas. In Meridian, the new launch used the same promotion but only ran on ITV 1.

The effect was remarkable with spontaneous awareness up nearly 20% in both regions and a £4.50 payback per £1 invested in Yorkshire and a £0.92 increase in Meridian.

With the success of the second trial, the brand approved a national roll out of the message backed by in-house staff training.

This ran for a month in Autumn 2009, with a mix of ITV 1, C4, Five, satellite and cable channels, once again targeting cat and dog owners.

Felix and Bakers teamed up to provide the special promotional ad on C4 and Five.

Results

The national roll out delivered a 64% increase in spontaneous awareness nationally and a 16% increase in prompted awareness, with growth in awareness also evident in Yorkshire and Meridian.

Softer measures also rose, up 17% for “a one stop shop for everything you need for your pet” and 9% for “are competitively priced”.

The improved awareness contributed to a 16.5% increase in total sales for the 41 weeks to January 7 2010 and a 9.8% increase in like for like sales. Payback profit on TV was £3.10 per £1 invested.

The success of TV is also reflected in the £725m profit made by Bridgepoint when it sold the brand to another private equity house KKR.