Why is this work relevant for PR?

The campaign made headline news in Singapore and overseas on trade publications, national news sites, and websites dedicated to animal news. Furry's Kitchen conducted an interview with Channel News Asia, raising awareness on how dog food can be fresh and high-quality like Furry's Kitchen, and changing the negative perception of dog food. The Straits Times even asked for a taste and our products were praised by their food critics in a video feature and on print. Plus, the food influencers who didn't know they ate dog food came out in support of us, commending our dog food quality to followers.

Background

Although Singaporeans have high standards for our own food, not the same can be said for our dogs as the majority eat processed kibbles. Furry’s Kitchen is a dog food start-up that creates fresh food for dogs. With more established brands dominating the market, we need to create a campaign that proves the top quality of our dog food in a disruptive way.

Describe the creative idea (20% of vote)

To show how fresh and tasty our dog food is, Furry’s Kitchen put it to the ultimate taste test with humans. We invited the harshest critics, Singapore's top food influencers, for a tasting without them knowing it was for dog food. They loved it. Within hours, they praised and recommended our dishes made out of dog food to their followers.

Describe the PR strategy (30% of vote)

Furry's Kitchen is the first dog food brand that has gotten the harshest human critics, top food influencers, to try dog food without them knowing. We needed to target dog owners and show that if our dog food is good enough for top food influencers, it's good enough for your dog, ultimately changing people's negative perception of dog food. We knew the story would be newsworthy as we got top food influencers that were highly regarded in the food scene to eat dog food without telling them. Our strategy was to focus on the disruptive way we used human food influencers while leveraging their credibility when pitching the story. At the same time, we wanted to be where our target audience already was, so we seeded our campaign to groups on social media and messenger apps that were interested in dogs and allowed it to organically spread from there.

Describe the PR execution (20% of vote)

We shared our launch film as well as screenshots of top food influencers' glowing reviews of our dog food with the media in a written press release. At the same time, we shared our video with dog lover and dog rescue groups on Facebook and Telegram that we knew our target audience already followed. Viewers could easily forward and share the videos to their friends. To further support our launch film, we also created shorter formats like GIFs, IG stories, and visual posts on social media.

List the results (30% of vote)

Furry’s Kitchen made the headline news in Singapore with several publications including Channel News Asia, whose piece focused on how dog food can be high quality too. The national newspaper, Straits Times, asked for a taste and our products were praised by their food critics on a video feature and a print feature. This gave us a platform to educate the public on the benefits of feeding your dog fresh, top-quality food like Furry's Kitchen. Overseas animal news sites like WooWu and Pawjourr as well as trade publications like Campaign Asia and Bandt picked up our story too. Our campaign was even featured as the top story of the month on MarkeTech. Many viewed and engaged with our video online, including the original food influencers who attended our initial tasting event, praising the high quality that Furry’s Kitchen products had, and how it was indiscernible from regular human food. Some even wrote articles about the positive experience on sites like High Net Worth, agreeing that dogs need an upgrade in their food. As a result, Furry’s Kitchen saw a 746% increase in online followers and our sales increased by 19.3%. Netizens even asked if they could feed their children our products, and that we should create a real restaurant. Thanks to the campaign, we changed the public's negative perception of dog food and proved through our disruptive use of human influencers that if Furry's Kitchen is good enough for Singapore’s top food critics, it’s definitely good for your dog.