Crufts Social Event Activation

Overview

James Wellbeloved, home of naturally healthy pet food, has been a proud exhibitor at Crufts for 25 years, and are also sponsors of the popular family cross-breed competition Scruffts. Throughout the year, heats of the popular Scruffts contest take place, with the final culminating in the Crufts arena.

Crufts is the biggest event of the year for pet food brands. It’s a noisy and crowded space – not only on the ground at the NEC in Birmingham, but online too. James Wellbeloved required a social activation of the event which would cut through the noise on this important anniversary year.

Services

Social Media Marketing
Digital Activation
Content Creation

The Process

We challenged ourselves to create a ‘Best in Show’ social activation campaign for the client with a number of strands of activity to spark engagement not only with fans at the show, but encouraging people at home to get involved too.

To build the excitement for Crufts, we ran a competition with our social community, giving them the chance to join us at the event, with twenty pairs of tickets up for grabs. We hid an illustration of Biscuit, last year’s Scruffts winner, on the James Wellbeloved website. Fans and followers had to find the illustration on the website, screen cap it, and post it in the comments to enter. We hid the illustration on the Why Us? section, allowing the audience to get to know the brand whilst hunting for Biscuit.

The Outcome

We saw some incredible results from our social activation at Crufts and the conversations carried on way after the event wrapped up. See below for the best outputs. James Wellbeloved were delighted with the success and we’re already on to planning future events – to make them bigger and better!

With records smashed across the board, and James Wellbeloved’s Crufts content being so prominent during the event, it’s clear we made the most of this very special 25th anniversary year.

Social Activation at Crufts.

At the event, our social expert shared behind-the-scenes footage on Facebook, Instagram and Twitter. Capturing the action at the stand, highlighting offers and giveaways, as well as the countless dogs who came to visit (plus a celebrity or two). We worked closely with Instagram influencer Dr. James Greenwood, who attended Crufts in partnership with James Wellbeloved, tapping into his extensive audience through collaborated posts across the Scruffts weekend.

But that’s not all. We commissioned a live animal caricature artist to join us at the stand, creating portraits of customer’s pets which were shared across James Wellbeloved’s social channels. We even convinced the six Scruffts finalists, and a few famous pooches who visited the stand to have their portraits done too.

For Snapchatters, our Geofilter covered the whole of the NEC venue, allowing anyone snapping from the event to overlay our branded Scruffts filter on their Snaps.

Plus, to make the most of every opportunity, our team back here in Leeds monitored conversation across the Crufts hashtags all weekend, joining conversation on Twitter, and engaging with Instagram content. Supporting key moments, such as our competition and the announcement of the Scruffts winner, with paid activity, to help extend the reach even further.

We didn’t want those not at Crufts to feel left out, though, so across the Crufts weekend we ran a play-along-at-home competition, meaning the social community who weren’t at the NEC could take part in the fun too. We created a Facebook Frame which the James Wellbeloved social community could overlay onto their own Profile Picture to show their support for the Scruffts finalists. Those who used the Frame were entered into another prize draw, allowing everyone to feel part of the Crufts action.

And finally, after Crufts ended, we shared video round-up captured across the weekend to look back at all the fun. Holding a live watch-along of the Channel 4 Scuffts documentary on Twitter, sharing all the anecdotes we’d learnt from the finalists. We posted thirty times during the show – tweeting once every two minutes to maximise every opportunity!

Incredible Results From our Social Activation at Crufts.

Our Instagram activity was particularly successful, achieving top three positions and more with James Wellbeloved posts for the official event hashtag #Crufts2018. This means our posts were a combination of most viewed, most liked and most commented. This also meant that our Crufts Instagram content became the best performing content by impressions and engagement on the James Wellbeloved account for the past two years.