By Guest Blogger, Donna DeClemente, Donna's Promo Talk

I'm still thinking about the trip I made to Chicago last week to attend PMA's Integrated Marketing Conference. I wrote this post here last week about some of the of great sessions and conversations going on for day one of Blur.  The conference ended with the Annual Reggie Awards gala and dinner which awarded the top promotional marketing campaigns of the past year that really made "the cash register ring". Here's the case history that was submitted of the winning campaign entered by Mars Petcare and their agency Catapult Action-Biased Marketing.

The PEDIGREE® Super Bowl: Crazy Pet Owners campaign was designed to bring renewed attention to PEDIGREE® and its Adoption Drive to find homes for the over 4 million dogs who enter shelters every year.

Leveraging a funny, irreverent Super Bowl advertisement featuring exotic and unmanageable “crazy” pets, PEDIGREE wanted to engage this vast audience in an online interactive experience that drove awareness of the brand, cemented its positioning as a caring organization, and helped participants contribute to the feeding of dogs without a home.

PEDIGREE surged to its highest dollar sales ever with $22.2MM booked in audited channels!  Dollar share reflected the same momentum with the highest dollar share gain in a single period.

Integration with PR efforts provided significant lift in pre-event site traffic and engagement with 115.5% lift in total page views and an incredible 225.2% lift in visitors with a 223.4% lift in unique visitors.

The positive momentum continued post-game with 146.2% lift in total page views, 238.7% lift in visitors; 242.3% lift in unique visitors and 19.4% lift in time spent per visit.

Total video views were 2,243,847 — which equated to the same number of bowls of food donated to dog shelters across the country.

PEDIGREE needed messaging to speak to the benefits of dog adoption without bringing down the lighthearted mood of the Super Bowl audience. It also needed a hub where consumers could take action, share in the adoption cause and engage with the brand after the commercial aired.

SITE CREATIVE
What better way to communicate a great message than with humor! A hilarious microsite was created that supported Super Bowl messaging and included tongue-in-cheek behind-the-scenes “Crazy Pet” stories, communicated via documentary-style videos of people who own a ”crazy pet” — like Rusty the Rhino, Bruno the Ostrich, and Max the Bison.

To both grab, and keep, consumer attention, Rusty the Rhino was featured on a startling 3D animated homepage takeover for the PEDIGREE Website that literally caused the screen to shatter as Rusty stampeded through. The tagline “Maybe You Should Get a Dog” resonated through the entire campaign.

OFFER
An engagement program was created for those who wanted to help, but could not adopt.  For every ad and “behind the scenes” video viewed, one bowl of food was donated to a shelter dog. Additional online content supported the Adoption Drive and PEDIGREE’s mantra of “Help Us Help Dogs.”

SOCIAL NETWORKING
The program was promoted via PR and distributed virally across the Web through Facebook videos, Twitter, an iPhone application, and paid search. Content was also available across post-game online channels, including Yahoo! and YouTube.

PEDIGREE surged to its highest dollar sales and highest volume gains ever as a result of the campaign. The site, iPhone app, “behind the scenes” content, disruptive takeover and additional online and offline elements provided a powerful combination of creativity and technology and drove awareness of the adoption drive, donation of food to shelters and sales for the product.

Congratulations to the team for a great campaign. Check out Pedigree's current pet adoption Facebook page that is raising food for pet shelters.