Mars Petcare Fosters the Category at Walmart

Mars Petcare just concluded a Walmart-specific program advocating for pets that connected multiple stakeholders to drive the category at the mass merchant. The Extend a Paw program was born out of a desire to accelerate growth across the portfolio and rooted firmly in data that had uncovered a leak – and an opportunity.“Pet owners were coming into Walmart and buying consumables for their home but then they were leaving to buy their pet food somewhere else,” says Alicia Wieburg, senior omni marketing manager for Mars Petcare. “What we realized was this subset of audiences over indexed on expecting more from their brands. They wanted to see them show up a little bit more in social causes even if they bought the exact same brand outside of Walmart.”Pivoting from an initial concept of getting Mars pet brands involved in Walmart’s annual Fight Hunger program, the idea began to evolve into a pet-specific purpose-driven program that would fuel shopper perceptions of Walmart as a destination for great pet brands. Coming to Walmart early on in the process with some raw concepts secured alignment in the very beginning, drawing in multiple partners with unique points of view that helped the effort snowball.The result was a give-back program pledging a meal to Greater Good Charities (up to 2.5 million) for every qualifying in-store or online purchase made at Walmart from Aug. 1 through Sept. 30. The execution included over 11,000 total pallet displays and endcaps across the five participating products — Nutro dry dog food, Iams dry dog and dry cat food, Temptations cat treats and Pedigree dry dog food — that directed shoppers to a walmart.com showcase highlighting the driving cause component. Individual item pages were outfitted with similar creative. Walmart Connect media and search supported.“You might not go into the store as often as you used to so if you’re browsing onsite, if you’re doing your Walmart pickup and delivery order, we had to make sure that the item page itself reflected the same kind of experience you were getting in store,” Wieburg says.Layering the shopper insights from Team M/A/X (which is the The Mars Agency group that works with Mars Petcare) atop data from Walmart Connect helped Mars identify the right audiences to target: those that have an affinity for purchasing brands that give back (in any category) and who are spending less than someone who gets all their pet food at Walmart.As additional partners were drawn in, the program grew to encompass extra elements that amplified the message, including a coordinated press release, social activity, an internal Walmart email, digital placements, Walmart radio and Walmart TV. What was different about this program is that Walmart did a lot of work on the brand’s behalf. M/A/X sent the retailer the program assets so that they could take the creative and tweak it as needed.“We don’t get the same kind of data for all of these. The metrics are very different for first-party closed-loop reporting for media versus an impressions-based kind of tactic like Walmart radio or Walmart TV. So what we do is we try to hit the shopper regardless of where they’re at and at the end we try to see how much each tactic might have contributed," Wieburg says."We have to get comfortable not having all the data all at the same time because we could miss out on a great opportunity,” Wieburg says.Success metrics include the impact on the community as measured by reaching the donation goal, the impact on the shopper’s perception of Walmart as a pet destination as measured by overall shopper household penetration and category lift, not just general sales lift and share.“This program is more than just driving conversion at the moment. It’s elevating the category and how people perceive Walmart and how they care about pets,” Wieburg says. “The data that you get at the beginning to build the foundation of the program is arguably the most important data … Always keep the shopper at the center of your activations. I know too often we default back into tactics but if you really talk that common language about what you’re trying to solve, you’re going to go a lot farther.”

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