Challenge
Zoetis, with over $4.6 billion in sales, was a new company and brand having just spun out of a pharma giant. Its name changed from Pfizer Animal Health and marketing wanted to increase name recognition and strengthen relationships with its end consumers – horse lovers and livestock owners. This, in turn would cause brand recognition to pull the product through distribution channels such as veterinarians. Because Zoetis wanted to establish the new brand and grow a community around it, their marketers turned to LiveWorld to balance regulatory and legal requirements while creating a deeply engaging program. In just six months, the LiveWorld team developed a brand building and lead generation program. This included creating an online space that attracted and aggregated the end consumer by providing a premium social experience. Challenge Traditionally, Pfizer Animal Health had an indirect relationship with its end customers, leveraging veterinarians as the conduit for its products. The pharma company wanted the brand to have greater awareness with consumers who would, in turn, order the brand through distributors such as vets. Because the industry is tightly regulated, Zoetis needed to carefully balance regulatory and legal requirements with a more free-form social media experience. Zoetis turned to LiveWorld for assistance, starting with their equine product line for horses.
Solution
To implement the effort, the Zoetis Equine team asked LiveWorld to create and deploy a social media strategy and program that would create a direct dialogue with horse owners, reinforce the new brand name, and create a more valued customer experience using social channels. LiveWorld began by conducting a series of interviews, workshop sessions, and planning meetings with brand representatives. This enabled the team to create and implement a socialized view of the brand, a cultural model, and a brand participation roadmap which were leveraged when developing social media programs. LiveWorld created purposeful, conversation-driven content designed to inspire conversations and increase engagement. This included launching and managing EQStable, a Facebook page that appeals to a passionate community of individual horse owners and handler-trainers.
Results
One month after the EQStable Facebook page was launched, it had 107,000 Likes and a 29% engagement rate – more than triple the average ratio for similar communities. The Facebook page continues to have high visibility in members’ newfeeds because of a good balance of brand content, highly engaging social content, and personalized and focused conversations. LiveWorld created a Facebook page to share customer-centric community involvement, industry support, and sponsorship stories. By integrating the brand into its end-users’ daily lives, LiveWorld helped Zoetis reinforce the name change and reach its target audience, veterinarians. Plus, the LiveWorld team extended the brand’s premium customer experience by engaging with 15,000+ interactions that delivered high-quality wellness content with a demonstrated value to fans as measured by survey, activity, and comment sentiment. Last, the program met the primary ROI goal, to cost effectively build a database of customer names. The social program did so at a fraction of the cost of the next best venue, search engine marketing.
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