Samsung tasked us with increasing purchase consideration for the Galaxy S9 phone to keep momentum going after the phone’s initial launch concluded. As the mobile phones category is notoriously hyped for being all about the launch, generating an increase in consideration post-launch would not be easy as people on average only upgrade their phones every 2-3 years.

Samsung is known as the innovator in the smartphone category when it comes to features. For the Galaxy S9, Samsung designed the camera to be lightspeed ahead of competitors with dual aperture lenses that automatically adapt to bright light and super low light like the human eye, and super slow-mo that shoots at 960 frames-per-second vs. the standard 240. It is the ultimate capture-and-share machine.

Our interpretation of the brief was to inspire dog lovers and enhance the way they capture and share their fur baby love with the Galaxy S9.

Our idea was to celebrate the love people have for their pups with the “Best Dog Day Ever”. It was based on the insight that people love dogs as much as they love their children. Dogs really are the fur babies in the family. Psychology Today studied the phenomenon of doggie love and found that owners view their pooches not as animals, but as family members, as proven by MRI scans of their brains, which elicited the same response when looking at photos of both their pets and kids. That explains why pictures of friends’ dogs dominate social feeds as much as babies.

This understanding about people’s love for pups, and how they passionately share that love with the world on social media, guided us forward.

It may seem like dog owners are a small, niche audience; but nearly 90 million dogs are kept as pets in homes across America. We simply needed to scale the Best Dog Day Ever by sharing the brand’s event and content captured across the nation. It needed to be an event that would attract a live audience and be worth remembering and sharing to reach the large audience of dog lovers on social media who are also phone users.

The Best Dog Day Ever happened on a beautiful summer day at New York City’s Brookfield Place. We gave dogs the star treatment, with activities and experiences that brought them pure joy. Ball pits. Obstacle courses. Dress up outfits. Doggie pools. Dogs frolicked in delight at the event designed just to make them happy.

We captured and shared numerous moments of pets and their owners, distributing content captured by Galaxy S9s.

We teamed up with The Dodo, one of the biggest sites for animal lovers with a highly engaged social media audience, to invite dog lovers to the event through social posts and targeted reminders.

Attendees seeing their pups having a blast in all their glory was something owners wanted to remember and share, and we had Galaxy S9 phones at the ready to test out the new features. Canine stars came too, including Doug the Pug and Winston the White Corgi, and their humans created and amplified content captured with Galaxy S9s to their huge social followings and for The Dodo’s site.

The Dodo posted the content, in addition to Samsung’s feeds, and we promoted to dog lovers across the social media grid. We also shared a recap video so people everywhere could experience the Best Dog Day Ever for themselves.

Everyone and every pup at the Best Dog Day Ever had a grin on their face (yes, dogs do smile!).

Samsung saw an 8% increase in purchase consideration for the Galaxy S9 from our brand study conducted across the footprint of the scaled media (not just event attendees). This is a significant increase as Samsung is the #2 US phone brand in a fiercely competitive category.

At scale, we generated more than 16 Million total impressions for Galaxy S9 captured content from the Best Dog Day Ever and 6.4 Million video views across the web, which is quite large for a one-day event. More than 1,400 owners and their happy puppy pals attended the live event, 98% of whom recalled Samsung’s association (the humans, not the dogs!).

Best of all, we helped people celebrate and share their love for their dogs. That love translated to big gains for Samsung.