Updated: Purina sent me and my dog a surprise! Cooper got dog treats from Purina and I got a JAMBOX by Jawbone!
Of all the social platforms out there, Twitter is one of my favorites. It really takes some thoughtfulness and finesse if you want to organically grow it. For example: If you’re a brand like Purina using Twitter and your primary business is to sell dog food, how do you do that? You don’t sell dog food! It’s not about the dog food. It’s about the lifestyles of the consumers who should be using your product.
A few months ago I used Mercedes-Benz as an example of how to use Twitter to gain customer loyalty through simple, thoughtful gestures. Today, we’re going to give some love to Purina!
A little over a week ago, Purina started a twitter campaign called #petsatwork and used national Bring Your Pet To Work Day to kick it off. Purina let some of their influencers know a few days in advance so we could join in on the fun. Since I can’t resist an opportunity to talk about my dog, I was really excited about this day! Being a fan of Mercedes-Benz and Purina, I decided to include both of them in my initial tweet to talk about the day. I saw it as a great opportunity to feature how I get my pet to work!
There they go again….Mercedes-Benz being awesome as usual!
On National Take Your Pet To Work Day, I pretty much dedicated the entire morning to featuring the office dog, @NashvilleCooper. What Purina did next totally surprised me!
They created an image just for Cooper! They even gave him an office title! C.P.O!
While we were at it, I decided to include some other brands in the conversation that could possibly leverage the excitement. I remembered that @Lyft allows dogs to ride in their vehicles. I’m a big fan of Lyft, especially since they reached out to me to help their team get familiar with Nashville. Turns out, Lyft uses the hashtag #roverlyfts so the obvious decision was to put #roverlyfts and #petsatwork together.
Purina continued to impress me with their “pawfect” display of thoughtfulness and creativity.
To top the day off, Purina virtually presented @NashvilleCooper the highest #petsatwork honor.
I love it when big brands do social media right. Purina took the time to engage their influencers and spark a ton of great conversation. They understand a dog owners lifestyle and their social media caters to that. When we stop looking at social media as an emotionless, one direction dialogue tool, we can see that it’s really no different than our daily human interactions.
It’s the little things a brand can do, like acknowledging a tweet, that will make a fan think about buying their product the next time they see it in a store….or on the showroom floor.
“Be so awesome at what you do that your customers do your marketing for you. Thus, social marketing is not about tech tricks but amplifying customer love through content marketing.”
Well played, Purina. Well played.
