2025 Winner
BronzeMedia Collaboration: Best Partnering
PetValu
"Playtime"
True Media
"Playtime"
True Media
Pet Valu’s core audience, Devoted Pet Lovers (DPLs), remained committed to their pets by continuing to purchase essentials like food, even amidst economic uncertainty. However, discretionary items such as pet toys saw a decline.
So how could Pet Valu reposition toys not as a luxury, but as essential to a pet’s health and happiness?
Research uncovered a surprising gap. While DPLs are emotionally connected to their pets, they underestimate the value of play, even though it supports mental stimulation, stress relief, and bonding. Further Vividata insight revealed that DPLs spend more than 7 hours a day on screens, often sidelining quality interaction with their pets.
That critical insight led to a powerful, behavior-shifting idea: “Playtime”, a campaign that encouraged pet parents to pause their screen time and reconnect with their pets through play.
The strategic alliance between Pet Valu and Amazon provided the perfect platform to meet DPLs during their screen-heavy routines, especially in streaming environments, with a contextually relevant and highly engaging message that would reposition toys as a tool for pet wellness, not just entertainment.
Pet Valu launched a full-funnel, multi-platform media program that intersected consumers’ daily digital habits.
At the heart of this execution was a collaboration and deep integration with Amazon’s media ecosystem, creating an experience that was as playful as it was persuasive.
Their key activations included their Amazon Fire TV Feature Rotator. A fully customized experience that mimicked the Fire TV interface, complete with a surprise squeaky ball sound, was designed to catch the attention of both pet owners and their pets. This playful interruption served as a unique moment of dual-species engagement, and broke ad standards, and required Amazon executive approval. As well as Amazon Prime Video In-Stream Ads, which targeted ad placements appeared during passive viewing moments, acting as a timely prompt for DPLs to take a break and play with their pets.
Pet Valu and Amazon’s partnership was key to overcoming challenges such as: creative coordination, which ensured that the creative aligned with the tone of streaming environments while delivering brand messaging in an emotionally resonant way.
Amazon’s robust analytics suite allowed for clear performance tracking, including video completion rates, click-throughs, and behavioral metrics tied to playtime and engagement, ensuring the campaign’s effectiveness could be fully validated.
By leveraging Amazon’s scale, targeting, and custom creative capabilities, Pet Valu was able to turn digital screen time into a moment of reflection, action, and emotional connection.
Together, Pet Valu and Amazon delivered several industry and brand-firsts. Such as the first-ever customized Fire TV interface, transforming the streaming environment into a playful prompt for real-world interaction. As well as their first dual-species engagement tactic, the squeaky ball sound was not just for humans; it was an audio cue designed to capture the attention of pets themselves, making it one of the few truly co-viewing experiences in the streaming world.
The digital activation was reinforced in-store across more than 800 Pet Valu locations, ensuring a seamless experience that spanned digital, physical, and emotional touchpoints.
The campaign didn’t just run on media; it transformed the context of the media itself, inserting Pet Valu’s wellness narrative into the streaming environment in a way that felt natural yet behaviorally impactful.
This partnership with Amazon was not just innovative; it fundamentally reshaped how Pet Valu connected with its audience, breaking through screen fatigue with meaningful storytelling and utility.
The campaign delivered exceptional business and brand-building outcomes, proving the strength of Pet Valu’s media strategy and its partnership with Amazon. It garnered 914,000 completed video views, reflecting strong content retention, Amazon Fire TV view-through rate: 82.5% (outperforming the 77% benchmark). There was a spike in website performance with 14,000 landing page clicks, a 311% increase in new users to the “Playtime Hub” (vs. the goal of 100%), and a 393% increase in sessions vs. previous campaign landing pages.
The campaign successfully reframed toys as essential to pet wellness while strengthening Pet Valu’s positioning as a trusted advisor in personalized pet care. They also drove sustained behavior change, encouraging more daily playtime between pet parents and their pets. “Playtime” contributed to an overall 4.6% increase in sales and a 5.8% increase in revenue vs. the previous year.
This case demonstrates how a powerful insight, a timely behavioral idea, and a best-in-class media partnership can come together to not only shift perception but also change behavior and drive business growth. The partnership between Pet Valu and Amazon was foundational to every success in this campaign, transforming a toy category into a wellness movement, one “playful paws” at a time.
So how could Pet Valu reposition toys not as a luxury, but as essential to a pet’s health and happiness?
Research uncovered a surprising gap. While DPLs are emotionally connected to their pets, they underestimate the value of play, even though it supports mental stimulation, stress relief, and bonding. Further Vividata insight revealed that DPLs spend more than 7 hours a day on screens, often sidelining quality interaction with their pets.
That critical insight led to a powerful, behavior-shifting idea: “Playtime”, a campaign that encouraged pet parents to pause their screen time and reconnect with their pets through play.
The strategic alliance between Pet Valu and Amazon provided the perfect platform to meet DPLs during their screen-heavy routines, especially in streaming environments, with a contextually relevant and highly engaging message that would reposition toys as a tool for pet wellness, not just entertainment.
Pet Valu launched a full-funnel, multi-platform media program that intersected consumers’ daily digital habits.
At the heart of this execution was a collaboration and deep integration with Amazon’s media ecosystem, creating an experience that was as playful as it was persuasive.
Their key activations included their Amazon Fire TV Feature Rotator. A fully customized experience that mimicked the Fire TV interface, complete with a surprise squeaky ball sound, was designed to catch the attention of both pet owners and their pets. This playful interruption served as a unique moment of dual-species engagement, and broke ad standards, and required Amazon executive approval. As well as Amazon Prime Video In-Stream Ads, which targeted ad placements appeared during passive viewing moments, acting as a timely prompt for DPLs to take a break and play with their pets.
Pet Valu and Amazon’s partnership was key to overcoming challenges such as: creative coordination, which ensured that the creative aligned with the tone of streaming environments while delivering brand messaging in an emotionally resonant way.
Amazon’s robust analytics suite allowed for clear performance tracking, including video completion rates, click-throughs, and behavioral metrics tied to playtime and engagement, ensuring the campaign’s effectiveness could be fully validated.
By leveraging Amazon’s scale, targeting, and custom creative capabilities, Pet Valu was able to turn digital screen time into a moment of reflection, action, and emotional connection.
Together, Pet Valu and Amazon delivered several industry and brand-firsts. Such as the first-ever customized Fire TV interface, transforming the streaming environment into a playful prompt for real-world interaction. As well as their first dual-species engagement tactic, the squeaky ball sound was not just for humans; it was an audio cue designed to capture the attention of pets themselves, making it one of the few truly co-viewing experiences in the streaming world.
The digital activation was reinforced in-store across more than 800 Pet Valu locations, ensuring a seamless experience that spanned digital, physical, and emotional touchpoints.
The campaign didn’t just run on media; it transformed the context of the media itself, inserting Pet Valu’s wellness narrative into the streaming environment in a way that felt natural yet behaviorally impactful.
This partnership with Amazon was not just innovative; it fundamentally reshaped how Pet Valu connected with its audience, breaking through screen fatigue with meaningful storytelling and utility.
The campaign delivered exceptional business and brand-building outcomes, proving the strength of Pet Valu’s media strategy and its partnership with Amazon. It garnered 914,000 completed video views, reflecting strong content retention, Amazon Fire TV view-through rate: 82.5% (outperforming the 77% benchmark). There was a spike in website performance with 14,000 landing page clicks, a 311% increase in new users to the “Playtime Hub” (vs. the goal of 100%), and a 393% increase in sessions vs. previous campaign landing pages.
The campaign successfully reframed toys as essential to pet wellness while strengthening Pet Valu’s positioning as a trusted advisor in personalized pet care. They also drove sustained behavior change, encouraging more daily playtime between pet parents and their pets. “Playtime” contributed to an overall 4.6% increase in sales and a 5.8% increase in revenue vs. the previous year.
This case demonstrates how a powerful insight, a timely behavioral idea, and a best-in-class media partnership can come together to not only shift perception but also change behavior and drive business growth. The partnership between Pet Valu and Amazon was foundational to every success in this campaign, transforming a toy category into a wellness movement, one “playful paws” at a time.
Credits
Client: Pet ValuTanbir Grover - CMO & CDO
Idan Driman - VP Marketing
Alison Preiss, Director, Integrated Marketing Manager
Jing Zhao - Director, Performance Marketing
Karen Or, Creative Team Manager, Marketing
Anna Maria Calaminici-Mills, Integrated Specialist, Marketing
Emily Choi, Social Media Specialist
Media Agency: True Media
Marty Vapsva - Director Media Planning
Barbara Glover - Director, Digital Investments and Activation
Lauren Stal - Associate Media Director
Amazon Canada
Anthony Garcia, Account Executive
Brian Crochetiere, Account Manager
Deep Dhankani, Campaign & Creative Manager
Samu Ncube, Regional Content Manager
Arrivals+Departures
VP Business Director: Katharine Houghton
Account Director: Alli Zakoor
Senior Brand Strategist: Hilary Taylor
CCO: Jeff MacEachern
Senior Copywriter: Oliver Chiang
Senior Art Director: Jordan Escobar
Integrated Agency Team Partners
PR: Beacon Strategic Communications