Denmark saw a surge in numbers of domestic dogs during the Pandemic in 2020. With more than 60.000 new domestic dogs, the total reached about 650.000. Or the equivalent of 25% of all households in Denmark.

Danish Internet and TV provider WAOO wanted to help all these new domestic dogs (and their first-time parents) for the Danish New Year’s Eve 2020/21 as this is a night of terror for both parties.

That's why WAOO launched a free TV channel showing a 10-hour long feature film 24/7 specially designed to calm dogs during the Danish war-like fireworks on New Year's Eve.

WAOO Internet and TV wanted to enter eastern parts of the Danish market which is predominantly dominated by the competing brand.

The brief was to activate WAOO brand in the days up to New Year's Eve and establish WAOO's local heritage, something the competing brand couldn't do as they're not Danish owned, which most Danes was aware off and had grown more and more dissatisfied with.

With a limited budget they asked for something beyond the usual TV ad. Something that would get people to not only talk about their local brand, but get the target group engaged in the brand.

To help all the new domestic dogs and their first-time parents for the upcoming New Year’s Eve, Danish Internet and TV provider WAOO launched an entire streaming channel dedicated to calm down dogs during a Danish war-like New Year's eve.

The TV channel showed a 10-hour long feature film 24/7 specially designed to calm dogs using sound and vision. The film was created in collaboration with leading scientists and experts in the field who helped orchestrate and optimized the relaxing content for dogs.

The content itself is predominantly featuring serene, peaceful nature shots, and is graded in blue and yellow colors. It’s filmed in 70 FPS and has a calm sound universe with a 64-67.000 HZ sound spectrum which is twice as big as humans. All of which was to sooth dog’s senses as much as possible.

It was launched across social media with a film highlighting this new service.

As the national news were full of stories of how the numbers of domestic dogs had went through the roof, which in fact counted for 25% of all Danish family households, we knew there’d be a massive interest in something that could help ease the pain for dogs and their owners during New Years.

To help fuel the conversation beyond our launch film, trailers and web banner campaign (on carefully selected websites with dog stuff) we early on in the process got dog communities on social media engaged in the project by auditioning their dogs to be part of the film.

Once social media was all on fire about the project our PR partner started doing their thing, which helped the story travel a lot further.

On the 21st December 2020 the project went live as our promotional film hit social media along side paid online media.

Dog owners, WAOO users or not, could find the film for their dogs on Youtube, WAOO TV app on demand, or streamed it on the WAOO TV channel.

Online media ran on carefully selected Danish dog websites, and on social media people were retargeted with cut downs of the launch film as well as other exiting content.

The campaign ran until 5th January. You can still find the calming film, A New Year's Tail, on WAOO's homepage though as people were super happy about it.

A New Years Tail was featured for 10 minutes on national TV (largest show), 15 minutes on national radio channel (the largest one), with millions of viewers and listeners.

Almost 27.000 people tuned in on New Years Eve, and only 17,3% of all the visitors tuning into the site on New Years Eve were WAOO's own customers.

More than 818.000 minutes of the film was watched on WAOO's channel.

On average 33 min / user.

A New Years Tail has over 20.000 views on Youtube of a view time of 26 minutes and 50 seconds on average.

Campaign materials had the highest performing engagement in the brands history, and a click trough rate of 1,65% (4x higher than benchmark), which is the brands best performing content.

People love WAOO for living their tagline 'Internet as it should be'. Showing people that they'd go as far as changing their tagline slightly ('New Year's as it should be') to do good and to help someone who doesn't even use their products (dogs) only felt natural.

WAOO is the brand to do this kind of unexpected activation, but they also have a local heritage which the leading brand doesn't as they're owned by a non Danish company, which most Danes are aware off and have grown more and more dissatisfied with.

So, for WAOO to help with something as local a problem as dogs health and wellness during a war-like New Years Eve in Denmark, was a no brainer.

'Internet as it should be' is for everybody. Even our best four-legged best friends.