tmwi are finalists at the UK Digital PR Awards

It is an immense achievement for our team to be shortlisted for the Low Budget Campaign of the Year at the 2024 UK Digital PR Awards. As a proudly independent agency, the tmwi team are always striving for the success of our people and our clients to deliver growth within a range of budgets. Our expert SEO and content team have proven time and time again that they can achieve impactful results and award-winning work and we hope to add another accolade to our growing collection.

tmwi is an independent media agency based in Stratford-upon-Avon, with a rich heritage of developing both established players in the market, and challenger brands, to unlock growth for our clients within competitive categories. We are proud of our successful long-term partnerships with many of our clients. We have a multi-award-winning team of experts with decades of experience spanning all disciplines of offline and digital media.

Our core values (Connections, Curiosity and Collaboration) are at the centre of everything that we do for our clients and teams. A connection that is echoed by Nestlé Purina PetCare who believe that when people and pets bond, life becomes richer.

About our campaign

The Covid-19 pandemic saw a real shift in pet ownership, with many of us acquiring lockdown pets. But Purina works with pet adoption charities like Battersea Dogs & Cats and Cats Protection, and wanted to contribute to shifting the conversation back to rescue where possible, as part of their responsible pet adoption commitment.

The campaign aimed to focus on one key audience – pet owners who are considering adoption and buying from a breeder. Purina first-party research had shown us that many new pet owners often feel a sense of real joy and achievement by adopting an animal from a shelter.

Practical considerations on costs and equipment are widely covered already, but there was little conversation around the emotional and wellbeing aspect. We saw a gap in the market for this narrative and named the campaign ‘rewarding rescue’ to tap into the emotional response.

Our team felt an immediate connection with the subject, being pet lovers ourselves. The work aligned all our shared values and we knew it would resonate with journalists and audiences alike. We knew that, without huge spend, we would need a powerful story to tell to win the best coverage.

How pets change our lives

To tell this story, we surveyed 600 pet adopters to ask what they found most rewarding about rescuing a pet. The survey included questions on how they found the experience alongside the impact it had on their lives.

Key findings:

• 80% of those who have rescued a pet from a shelter say it is the most rewarding thing they have ever done
• 76% considered the experience as valuable as bringing up a child
• 76% said it taught them to care about someone other than themselves
• 63% expressed immense happiness in witnessing their furry friend become happier
• 59% believe they have saved the life of the pet they adopted

Using these insights, we created a press release and various outreach approaches to both print and online digital publications, with key targets on national news, lifestyle, and pet-related outlets.

Storytelling to win hearts and minds

Given the emotive angle, we wanted a real person’s story as a link hook, so we created a supporting landing page with a sit-down interview with a dog owner who has adopted a pet. We covered questions about pet adoption and her experience with the adoption process alongside life after her new pet joined the family.

This interview provided new owners with advice from a pet lover who went through the adoption process, whilst also allowing the owner to share the joy she has experienced through adopting a dog.

Driving results

The campaign drove spectacular results, achieving coverage well above targets and boosting brand search by 49% during the month of campaign activity. Purina’s campaign not only outperformed coverage and backlink KPIs, but the results achieved had a direct impact on both awareness metrics and keyword rankings.

Rewarding Rescue campaign results:

• Coverage gained an estimated 1.9M views from the 50 pieces of coverage, including large national news titles such as The Sun, Daily Star, Mirror, Express and more.
• Search volume for the brand name in the UK increased by 49% during the month of campaign activity compared to the previous month.
• tmwi acquired 42 backlinks to the domain including 6 links with a 90+ domain authority and 27 links with a 50+ domain authority.
• Organic keyword rankings for Purina’s Find a Pet content grew +16% in just four months

The story was a great success and landed in all four different publication types targeted, generating backlinks from high authority domains alongside industry-relevant domains.

What this award means for us

Following on from the success of the campaign, recognition from The Digital PR Awards 2024 has been testament to the hard work and creativity of our team. Winning the Low Budget Campaign of the year would give our SEO team the validation from our industry that reflects their dedication to delivering growth and results for our clients.

Purina PetCare were equally as thrilled with the campaign results. James Campbell, Search & Digital Performance Lead at Purina PetCare, said: “Introducing Digital PR into our SEO strategy was something we had been talking about for a while, so it was great to this campaign up and running. TMWi worked closely with our digital and PR team to ensure we led with a story that we felt passionate about and that would resonate with both current and prospective pet owners. The results have been fantastic, which is great for us to help build the case for further Digital PR projects in the future.” 

Head of SEO at tmwi, Emily Wassell, said: “It’s absolutely fantastic to see the recognition from the Digital PR Awards 2024 for this campaign! Our team were so inspired by the stories and after working in close collaboration for many years with the Purina team, we knew the campaign would have special results. This nomination is a credit to the whole team who got involved at every stage, offering insights, ideas and suggestions to build on the idea and take it further at every step – I couldn’t be prouder of the results and it would mean so much to win the final award.”

Content Lead at tmwi, Simona Dragan, said: “Our goal was to shine a light on the special and transformative place pets hold in our hearts and homes. But we couldn’t have anticipated the overwhelming responses from pet owners. The connections people have shared were incredibly heartwarming. From escaping the daily stress to being more confident when talking to new people, their stories brought our campaign to life and reinforced the importance of the work Purina does to offer pets the best care possible. We couldn’t be more excited to create a campaign that celebrates these amazing bonds and see it resonate so much with people. Winning an award for this truly heartfelt endeavour would mean a lot to our dedicated team. Hopefully it will help spread the message even more and encourage other people to welcome a pet into their lives!”