Imagine your cat or dog runs away. Naturally, you want to get your furry friend back as quickly as possible. However, GDPR regulations can put a wrench in the works. Because if your pet is microchipped, the data on it is only readable by a few authorized entities unless you explicitly give consent to make it publicly accessible. And many pet owners don’t know this. That’s why the Department of Environment of the Flemish government asked us to develop an online campaign.
The idea is simple: check your pet’s chip on the website checkjechip.be, verify that the information on it is correct, and make it publicly accessible so more people can scan the chip. This way, a lost pet can be reunited with its owner more quickly.
The campaign targeted a large segment of the population: all dog and cat owners. We therefore engaged two well-known faces to reach this particularly broad target group.
However, we did not choose typical animal lovers such as An Lemmens or Chris Dusauchoit, but two BVs with very different interests and followers: animal lovers Natalia and Karl Vannieuwkerke wagged their tails.
In two online videos, they told an amazing story about how they once lost their pet and then sent viewers to checkjechip.be. With a teaser, they launched the campaign on their own social channels, after which the campaign ran for six weeks via Facebook, Instagram, YouTube, programmatic.
In addition to the strategy and concept, we also developed the communication package with which intermediaries such as veterinarians and animal shelters could help spread the message. We also organized a press conference where animal welfare minister Ben Weyts highlighted the importance of the campaign, and where journalists were given a demo of how to check such a chip.
The press conference was enthusiastically received: 11 articles and mentions during broadcasts of VRT Journaal and Radio 2, among others. Good for a reach of more than 4 million and an advertising value of +100K. We counted almost 59,000 clicks on Facebook, Instagram, YouTube and Programmatic and more than 22.5 million impressions. Natalia and Karl's videos achieved 120,000 organic views.
We also achieved the most important goal: 113,000 dogs were registered during the 2021 campaign year. An increase of 4.5% compared to 2020. The cat database counted 100,000 registrations, an increase of 9%. Meowkes!