Case Study: How Supertails engaged its Instagram community on April Fool’s Day | #casestudy

This Case Study takes a look at how Supertails engaged with Pet Parents through their Instagram community on April Fool’s Day; the brand’s co-founder – Varun Sadana – roped in the startup entrepreneurs’ ecosystem through a LinkedIn post, creating intrigue around the campaign.

Instagram being the core community for Supertails, the case study shows how the brand engaged with pet parents on this platform. The brand pooled in startup entrepreneurs as a part of the campaign, to leverage buzz on LinkedIn.

Category Introduction

India has a pet population of 32Mn and is growing by 12% annually. Interestingly, the market is grossly underserved with an opportunity size of $5Bn, of which only 20% is organised. Moreover, while the US has 1 vet for 1500 pet households, India currently has 1 vet for 5000+ pet households.  Supertails is tapping into this opportunity by creating a support system, where pet parents could come for the right products, healthcare services, training, and advice. While pet parenthood can be challenging, Supertails is building a community of pet parents and experts where caregiving is accessible and fruitful.

One of the biggest challenges right now in this industry is a lack of awareness and the lack of a trusted source of information, where a pet parent could find all the answers they need. This is what Supertails is solving for on their Instagram page.

Brand Introduction

Supertails is a platform that supports the pet parent community by providing a one-stop solution for their pet care needs. It connects pet parents with the right expertise, be it to discover products their pet may like, to find doctors, trainers, or online advice. 

Supertails empowers pet parents in 3 ways:

1. With the largest assortment of pet supplies, over 150+ brands. 
2. With our cohesive community of vets, behavioral experts, pet buddies and pet lovers 
3. With content led thought leadership through our online channels

Summary

As part of their April Fools Day celebration, Supertails pulled a prank on itself, where they let a dog hack their brand’s Instagram, Website, WhatsApp, and SMS systems. To add to the hack, and tie business and social media together, the dog distributed free treats to people visiting their website on 1st April 2022. This dog, Crime Master Doggo, was a rendition of probably the most popular (and most loved)  villain in Hindi Cinema, Crime Master Gogo.

Problem Statement/Objective

The primary purpose of the activity was engagement. As a part of their social media strategy, Supertails posts daily petcare content on their page. With this topical day, the brand wanted to shock its community and include them in the fun of the day.

The brand aimed to further its community-building efforts and engage people in dialogue with Supertails.

Also Read: Case Study: How Snickers used Snapchat lens, reaching 5.9 Mn users

Brief

Every brand leverages the topical days for campaigns, how can we do something clutter-breaking which also engages with GenZ pet parents in a unique way. The idea was to build a campaign which takes people by surprise, engages the community and integrates the platform with all social media channels.

Execution 

Crime Master Doggo, a dog with the indestructible power of puppy eyes took over Supertails’ Instagram on 31st March, where it changed the brand’s profile picture, Bio, and took over the feed with memes, mocking the brand’s online security. The persona, which was created by the brand to mimic the hugely popular Crime Master Gogo from Andaz Apna Apna, was just as quirky, and a rather harmless villain.

With his iconic eye patch and hooked moustache, Crime Master Doggo’s demand for Supertails and its 20,000 customers was to send him ‘treatos’. He blackmailed them on Instagram DMs, WhatsApp messages, SMSs that he sent to real customers asking them to send him treats as a ransom for the account.

The prank got real when the dog took over the website a few hours after the hack took place on Thursday. On Friday, April 1st, Crime Master Doggo began giving out free treats to customers visiting supertails.com.

The campaign was Instagram-first. It extended to the brand’s website and LinkedIn, where their founder Varun Sadana called the startup ecosystem for help retrieving their account from Crime Master Doggo’s shenanigans. 

Founders from the startup ecosystem like Shashank Mehta (The whole truth), Siddarth Pai (3one4 capital), Nikhil Taneja (Yuvaa), Shantanu Deshpande (Bombay Shaving Company), Abhay Hanjura (Licious), Vivek Gupta (Licious), and Hariharan Premkumar (DSG Consumer Partners) commented on this post.

Results

Quantitative:

• Instagram: Avg Engagement/ post: 5.2% | Avg Interactions/post: 115
• LinkedIn: Total engagement = 392, Comments = 86 

Qualitative:

“People on social media love it when they are shocked. And April Fools Day is the day of pranks so we had to give them one. Our customers are millennials, or 90s kids as we like to call them in pop culture. If a heist has to happen, who better to do that than our personal rendition of Crime Master Gogo? We’re happy it worked out, the responses we are getting from customers, investors, and social media folk is validation for us to do more fun campaigns.” – Varun Sadana, Co-founder, Supertails.

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