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When promotions in the pet supplies category look the same, it becomes increasingly difficult to capture the audience’s attention with discounts. For E-ZOO, we sought a solution that would both differentiate the brand from its competitors and deliver measurable performance results. This led to the creation of PromoStick, a mechanism that transformed online shopping into a genuine brand experience.

Goals

The pet supplies category is one of the most competitive in e-commerce, where standard promotions and discounts quickly lose their effectiveness. The main task was to increase sales in the dog supplies category and attract new customers to E-ZOO, while strengthening the brand’s position in a saturated environment.

To do this, we set a goal to create an interactive ecosystem of online touchpoints with the brand, increase reach and awareness among pet owners, achieve at least 2,000 PromoStick activations, and ensure a direct business result — growth in sales of dog products on the E-ZOO website.

The challenge

Pets have long been more than just animals. They are full-fledged members of the family. We love them dearly, spoil them with the best food, and buy stylish leashes and soft beds. Anything to make our furry friends happy.

This has led to rapid growth in the pet products market: in 2024, the pet products market in Ukraine reached UAH 45.4 billion and is one of the largest and fastest growing. For the fourth year in a row, annual turnover growth has been 15-30% (RAU, Pet Products Market Research, 2024). But along with growth, competition is also intensifying: online, most of the market is divided between large players, which creates a significant barrier to the development of smaller brands such as E-ZOO.

Marketing in this category is mostly focused on similar promotions and discounts, which makes brands less distinct from each other and distracts the audience’s attention. In such an environment, the key challenge was not just to offer another discount, but to stand out from the endless promotional catalog, attract the attention of pet owners, and build an emotional connection with the brand — in a way that would directly impact sales.

Insight and strategy

Dogs instinctively love the game “fetch the stick” — it’s a simple gesture that brings them joy and strengthens their bond with their owner. At the same time, pet parents in the digital world behave in a similar way: they are constantly looking for the best for their pets (great deals, promo codes, promotions). We saw a parallel: searching for a stick and searching for the best offer are almost the same behavior, only in different manifestations.

Based on this insight, we built a strategy: to transfer the favorite game of “fetch” to the digital world and turn the search for discounts into an interactive experience of interacting with the brand. This is how E-ZOO’s digital PromoStick came about — an online mechanism that combined the instincts of dogs and the rationality of pet owners and gave the brand the opportunity to stand out in the category not by the size of the discount, but by the format of contact.

Execution

First, our creative team developed the concept of offline PromoSticks — they collected real sticks, put smart messages and promo codes on them, and returned them to city parks. Dogs found the sticks during walks and brought them to their owners, who discovered discounts on food, toys, and other products for their pets. The idea instantly evoked an emotional response and organically engaged the audience with the brand.

Seeing the high level of audience engagement and interest, we scaled the mechanics to digital. To do this, we optimized the UX and integrated the digital PromoStick directly into the E-ZOO website — into the landing page, catalog, product cards, advertising, etc. Users could find promos at various points along the way, receiving alternative commercial offers in the form of promo codes integrated into performance campaigns: from contextual advertising to search campaigns, social networks, and retention mechanics.

This turned shopping into a game and a quest: you go in for cat food and suddenly find a digital stick with a promo code. Unexpected, exciting, and profitable at the same time.

As a result, our PromoStick ceased to be just a promotion — we built a full-fledged ecosystem of channels around the game with sticks. Offline sticks became the entry point, organic sharing on social media and influencers increased reach, search and social media advertising drove new audiences to the site, and CRM communications maintained interest and stimulated repeat purchases.

Results

PromoStick integrated into the user journey and allowed the emotional idea to be scaled into measurable business results. The campaign accurately targeted the audience and captured the attention of more than 1.6 million pet owners. The game mechanics increased engagement — CTR rose significantly, and conversion (CR) grew substantially, especially among new customers.

• promo During the 12-day promo, we attracted 2,267 sales using PromoStick, which accounted for almost 40% of all sales in the “Dog Products” category and 26% of E-ZOO’s entire product range.
• With an increase in the advertising budget of only 13%, we managed to attract 45.8% more sales in the Dog Products category, which generated +49.6% revenue. In other words, the average user check was even higher than usual.

At the same time, our “zoo creative” helped draw the attention of new customers to E-ZOO. We attracted a larger audience new to the brand, which led to a 61.5% increase in sales to new customers. PromoStick is an example of performance marketing that makes a campaign both emotional and effective, turning the game into real business results for the brand.

53% of Ukraine’s economy depends on food and agricultural exports. Today, landmines occupy 30% of our land, which is twice the size of Portugal. Without global assistance, it will take decades to make it safe. Countless agricultural fields remain dangerous. People can’t work there. 

The Minefields Honey Project ‒ the mix of nature and tech helps us to create a product that was never meant to exist by turning unsafe areas into flourishing gardens for symbolic honeymaking. 

Personnel limited edition jars with details about our issue became a diplomatic tool and were given directly to influential people. The harvested honey became an invitation to fundraising events for Ukraine’s demining. The first 55 personnel jars were presented at special economic events such as World Economic Forum (Davos) and, USA-Ukraine Partnership Forum (Washington D.C.).

For now, the project has resulted in 175 000 000 impressions and numerous headlines with zero budget investments. It also received awards in huge international festivals such as Cannes Lions, KIAF, and others. 

In 2024, Saatchi & Saatchi Ukraine, Kernel Ukraine, the Ministry of Foreign Affairs of Ukraine, and the Union of Beekeepers of Ukraine gathered the new honey harvest to ensure the project’s continuation.

Podorozhnyk is one of the TOP-5 pharmacy chains in Ukraine. The brand is growing rapidly, therefore, it needs an update that would reflect its fresh essence, advantages, and values.

The Publicis Ukraine team has rethought the brand identity and key message for the new Podorozhnyk. This is how the slogan appeared: “Podorozhnyk. Knows that helps”. It is based on two main brand advantages. On one hand, the brand has the necessary competencies, knowledge, experience, and resources to tell the client which drugs would be helpful in a specific case. On the other hand, Podorozhnyk cares about its client, offering high-quality drugs with no fakes. Also provides regular discount programs: “Quality available to everyone”, and provides additional services such as “Doctor at the pharmacy” etc.

Then the agency team updated the logo. Over the past years, Podorozhnyk has managed to build brand awareness, so when working with the visual component, it was important to maintain continuity, while reflecting updates and modernizing it. Thus, the recognizable medical cross and plantain leaf were visually rethought in the main green color. They merged into a single entity, where the significant element of the sign is linked to the corresponding word in the logo by color: the cross to the word pharmacy and the leaf to the Podorozhnyk. The logo has become concise and simple to understand, and the font has become lighter, neater, and more open.

This is a showcase of how Lenovo, a hi-tech electronics brand, thinks not only about the functional features of its products, but also takes care of both product usage conditions and client’s comfort.

Creating of Lenovo Meowbook – laptop for cats – added more emotions into the user-brand relationships as well as highlighting such a problem as ‘device damaging from cat’s fur’ which became communicative innovation in this category.

Virus orientation, originality, and non-standard merging of high technologies and additional customer care allowed Lenovo to be organically discussed in media and got 9.5 million impressions.

Molokija has found the solution in the situation with a quite limited advertising budget and persistently strong competitors’ activity. The Brand has stood out and found its own communication niche in the category.

Rebranding has been conducted, which led to changes in product packaging so that the product ingredients are now the most important highlighted detail. The aforementioned changes along with elaborately planned cross-media activity led us to the significant increase in OFF-TAKE indexes. As a result, both the White Yoghurt and Kefir became No. 1 in terms of market share in hryvnias as well as in tonnages in the period from February till May 2021.

We faced a challenge to break into the everyday life of people with a new product Kabanosy – long, thin sausages made from natural meat, positioned in between the meat-sausage and snack category. Until 2019 the product was unknown to both Ukrainian customers and distributors. Retail shops didn’t understand in which division the product should be sold, customers were puzzled whether to make sandwiches or eat Kabanosy with beer.

New product inspired us for a new approach for mixing media channels. We turned the classical media mix upside down and developed “DigiVision”, where digital plays a leading role in generating reach and TV is playing a secondary role. Non-standard and effective usage of media allowed Kabanosy to become a leader of the category of Snack and Meat products with minimal investment and significantly grew monthly sales.

This is a story about how we succeeded in finding a touchpoint with the most difficult and inapprehensible audience for all marketers – the Z generation. Against the backdrop of a growing market, a strong competitor, and a falling share of Garnier Pure, we were able to succeed.
Our decision, on the one hand, was obvious – to choose the brand ambassador. But on the other hand, not everyone is able to find the right one. The one to whom teenagers could look up to and was interesting to watch.

We chose Open Kids and did not lose out. Business results and increased attention to communication with girls from the music band serve as evidence.

Now our audience feels that with Pure they are the coolest ones!

tvlab – creative partner of the project.