Leaps & Bounds| Pet Food Brand Campaign By Willow &
A campaign with meat on the bone.
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The leaping off point.
‘Leaps & Bounds’ was known as budget-friendly pet food to buy in bulk, but it needed to learn some new tricks. With a pack of supermarket competitors at the same price point, the brand needed to jump through hoops give people a reason to choose beyond promotions.
Our strategic work uncovered a key advantage they hadn’t been playing: Leaps & Bounds food has some of the highest meat content in the category. It was time to shout (or bark) this from the rooftops, with a campaign that defined Leaps & Bounds as the meatier brand.
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A meaty idea.
Our meaty messaging hit two birds with one stone. It strongly implies health benefits (e.g.natural ingredients, high protein content) while also communicating taste appeal (whose pet doesn’t love meat?) However, we wanted this campaign to show the brand affordable and approachable, not like a premium, niche, hyper-nutrition brand. So, we built a brand world that leaned away from veterinary or ‘faux-fancy’ cues, instead using joyful, candid, everyday imagery. We focused on showing pets in motion, at home, and with their people. This switch up from the category norms allowed for more emotional connection and relatability, while capturing the healthy, active pets who eat Leaps & Bounds.
We encapsulated this world in a simple-but-powerful brand platform: Leap for joy.
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Taking the strategy for a walk.
Now it was time to turn strategic thinking into a social campaign. Given the endless stream of content on social platforms, we knew the assets needed to have a clear hook in the first 3 seconds, hold attention with rich visuals, and deliver our messaging with clear, engaging animation. And while hi-fi assets are always pet favourites, we would need to extend the campaign into fun, platform-native lo-fi content, too.
We chose our location, a light-filled and colour-rich home, to reflect the brand’s everyday, non-clinical feeling. Our furry talent were selected for their expressive faces, which are key for pulling attention on socials. The storyboards told a clear, simple story that hooks from the beginning. Animated supers added joy and intrigue to our strategic, meat-first messaging.
With four furry talent and a light-filled domestic location, in one day we shot four different social video assets, 6 pieces of lo-fi content, and a kennel’s worth of stills for use on website, socials, in-store signage and more.
In the age of performance marketing, so often the tail wags the dog. This campaign was a fabulous opportunity to show how brand strategy can be a strong foundation from which to build social assets that can capture and convert. Our paws are up for any more opportunities like this one.
Production by: Samantha Haines
Videography by: Brendan Cherry
Photography by: Tuscany Gray