Pet food brand Nutram has partnered with Canadian influencers and their pets to create cinemagraphs for the holiday season.
It’s part of the holistic pet food line’s #BetterTogether campaign, which calls upon Canadians to post a photo with their pet. For each photo posted, Nutram will donate $5 to Oxford County Animal Rescue, a volunteer-run pet rescue in Woodstock, Ont.
The holiday cinemagraphs — commonly referred to as living photos — include tech expert Amber MacArthur (who has 103,000 Twitter followers) and family, Helmut the Pug (12,000 Instagram followers) and photographer Christie Vuong, and Jeremy Gutsche and Shelby Walsh, founder and president respectively of the popular trend website Trend Hunter, and pet Pepper.
Heather McKay, associate brand manager of Nutram Pet Products in Elmira, Ont., says the #Better Together hashtag is aimed at touting Nutram’s Optimum Combinations pet foods, which use ingredients selected by holistic nutritionists that complement each other for specific health benefits.
For example, pet food with pumpkin and ginger combine to promote easier digestion, she says. “Like our Optimum Combinations, pets and pet parents also work better together.”
The #BetterTogether hashtag is also being used by a church group in North Carolina and was the name used by the main organization campaigning for a No vote in last year’s Scottish referendum on independence.
But “we haven’t seen any conflict,” McKay says. “They are not in our industry.”
To create the cinemagraphs, Nutram partnered with Flixel, a Toronto-based startup that combines still images with moving elements, such as a dog’s tail wagging.
One of the Flixel cinemagraphs features You Tube vlogger Sean Ward, singer Kat Langdon and Lemon the dog, with the dog looking back and forth at the two.
“We really liked the idea of the cinemagraph,” McKay says, adding it’s the first time a pet food brand has used it in a campaign. “They’re becoming more of a go-to tool for marketers. We wanted to have something that’s more modern and demonstrates a creative thinking in our market.”
She says influencers are increasingly using cinemagraphs for their holiday cards and “they’re just a really great storytelling tool to help brands build and produce highly engaging content.”
The influencers were all given samples of Nutram after the photo shoot, which took place a few weeks ago in Toronto.
Launched last week, the campaign runs until the end of the year and is being promoted on Facebook, Twitter and Instagram.
The #BetterTogether campaign with cinemagraph holiday cards was created by 88 Creative and Reset Branding. 88 Creative is also managing Nutram’s digital marketing and PR and Reset Branding is handling branding.
