Partnership Alters An Elephant's Life

A Natural Match

With this in mind, we highlighted the plight of 'Anne the Elephant' (the last circus elephant in the UK) to the Thirst Pockets team. We saw a compelling natural partnership between Longleat Safari Park – Anne’s saviours – and the Thirst Pockets brand.

Our PR, shopper marketing and experiential teams collaborated on a campaign to create a brand partnership between Thirst Pockets and Longleat. The results of this partnership would go directly towards supporting Longleat's building project to create the UK’s first Elephant Sanctuary and the Thirst Pockets Elephant Spa.

Our brief would also aim to grow sales and brand fame for Thirst Pockets across the UK by engaging with trade and with consumer audiences in-store.

Kids Go Free

The teams created a high energy promotion to accelerate sales throughout Spring/Summer 2012 and to deliver national coverage and engage with trade.

The consumer PR launch featured Zoe Ball and included elephant-sized blueprints of the project, as Zoe joined Anne the Elephant to announce the start of building, generating interest from broadcast, national, regional and consumer press.

An on-pack promotion offered consumers a ‘Kids Go Free’ voucher to Longleat with every pack, as well as chances to win one of 12 family Longleat safari VIP breaks via the Thirst Pockets Facebook page. This was supported by in-store POS media on trolleys, posters, and milk media executions in Sainsbury's stores.

Using this tiered approach allowed Thirst Pockets to engage with consumers outside of the three-hour commuting distance to Longleat, whilst also driving sales through a direct link to purchase (Kids Go Free voucher placed on-pack).

The Result?

We surpassed all the targets, with over 4,500 tickets redeemed and 2,600 entries to the VIP promotion on the Facebook page.

Here's what Vicky Williams, Thirst Pockets’ Marketing Manager at Georgia-Pacific had to say at the launch of the campaign:

“We are absolutely delighted to announce our partnership with Longleat, and are celebrating by offering our customers a fantastic value family offer. We are putting all our weight behind this project and can’t wait to officially open the Thirst Pockets Elephant Spa.”