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Animal health care company
Merial launched a business initiative impact program dedicated
to enhancing the health and welfare of animals.
The "Impact"
award was designed to recognise practices that used ideas
from the impact program to make a difference directly benefiting
the business in promoting innovation.
In collaboration with the Hinckley Times,
we devised an idea to run a regular column about case studies
of pets that we had treated in the practice in order to engage
with both new and existing clients.
We already had started working on the
case studies and saw this as an opportunity to develop it
to use in local media as well as on our website. It offered
a way to market ourselves to new clients, as well as raise
our profile amongst our existing customers.
We started by storing up a bank of case studies
that would prove interesting to readers, both on the website
and in the newspaper. We then collaborated with the Editor
of the Hinckley Times, who is a client of the practice,
and pitched the idea as a regular column in the paper.
The columns had been running in the free newspaper
the Hinckley Herald, but were proving so popular that they
were moved in to the paid for edition of the Hinckley Times.
We even invested in a digital camera for the practice to
take quality photos of the pets we featured, suitable for
reproduction in the newspaper.
We began writing a series of weekly columns,
using the space to highlight the common ailments of pets,
as well as the more unusual cases, with the pets helping
to bring the case studies to life.
It also gave us a chance to help raise awareness
of pet health problems, such as the need for regular vaccinations,
annual health checks and also the costs associated with
treating pets, to help promote the value of pet insurance.
The whole idea has worked extremely well –
we’ve had great feedback from clients and readers,
and occasionally some clients are starting to ask if their
pet can be featured in the weekly column!
For every pet that is featured, we frame the
article when it appears in the newspaper and send it to
them, as a thank you for taking part, added Mr Dunne. The
articles, which are all featured in more detail here on
the practice website have also attracted interest worldwide
with repeated requests via the internet for information
on particular conditions.
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