Sydney Sixers social media campaign delivers 2 million pet-loving YouTube viewers, 40,000+ new users and 7,834 new leads via Facebook

The Background:

Building on the success of the previous year’s campaign, Nature’s Gift dog food was proudly sponsoring the Sydney Sixers and needed help to leverage this partnership and convert it into sales.

Nature’s Gift Tasked Ultimate Edge With:

• Improving the awareness of Nature’s Gift, conveniently available at Coles, Woolworths and IGA.

• Boosting consideration of the Nature’s Gift Brand, natural pet food with no nasties and perfect for mixed feeding. 

• Data collection with an engaged audience using Sixers sponsorship as a hook.

The Challenge:

Nature’s Gift wanted to leverage their partnership with the Sydney Sixers Big Bash League team and build on the success of the previous year’s campaign. This relationship proved to be a natural fit, as dog owners know only too well their four-legged mates love to chase a ball, making them the natural fielders of the animal kingdom. UEC’s challenge was to tap into the active outdoors element of dog ownership, promoting a healthy lifestyle between pets and their owners.

Our Solution:

Ultimate Edge Communications split the strategy into a three-part sales funnel:

Awareness:

In this initial phase, we introduced Nature’s Gift as a dog food brand, differentiating it from other products with the same name.

Consideration:

At this stage, we focussed on letting the audience know that Nature’s Gift was naturally good food for naturally gifted dogs.

Intention:

This is where the relationship with the Sydney Sixers came in. The sponsorship agreement gave Nature’s Gift access to the home games at the SCG, exposing the brand to a target market of sport-loving active pet-owners. This campaign made full use of this relationship, with prize tickets and an onsite Fan Zone, which created more content to boost the message further.

The Media Plan:

To maximise the impact for each stage as well as avoid market segment over-saturation for the overall campaign, Ultimate Edge used the most effective marketing approach for each of the three stages of the campaign.

For the awareness phase, the brand message was carried by the brand TVC on YouTube and social posts from the Sydney Sixers, reaching a fresh audience not yet exposed to the brand.

To help customers move to the consideration phase, UEC used Facebook link ads, the brand’s landing page, database EDM and various social posts.

The third phase was crucial, as it pushed the partnership between the Sixers and Nature’s Gift to the forefront. This included promotion and coverage of the SGC Fan Zone, plus the Sixers competition, giving entrants the chance to win VIP box tickets and a year’s supply of Nature’s Gift. This stage also featured bespoke video content, featuring the Sydney Sixers pitting their skills against their pets in the ultimate cricket match. This went a long way in bridging the two brands.