5 insights on the brand’s approach to long-term engagement
When Edgard & Cooper carved out a plan to reclaim the “soul” of its company, it leaned into its core belief that pets deserve the best, and that the relationship between animals and their humans should be celebrated.
To make that mantra a reality, the European pet food brand dedicated its efforts to facilitating those celebratory moments, and dreamed up a Pet Holiday Calendar that comprises a year’s worth of bold, humor-led occasions. While all of them are fabricated, many have been turned into real-life festivities.
Since last fall, Edgard & Cooper has been aligning its event strategy with the calendar, and curating pet-centric experiences that treat animals as true participants. The programs are themed around a range of categories, too, including entertainment, fashion, politics and art. (No, really.)
This year, the brand’s calendar-based activations have run the gamut from The Ball Ball (a “Bridgerton”-themed soiree for pups) to a Viking Funeral for destroyed chew toys.
And that’s not to mention the envelope-pushing experiences it activates outside of the calendar, like parading a 9-foot piece of kibble around the Louvre, then contacting the museum to insist the installation be displayed inside.
So, what’s the method behind the madness? We sat down with Edgard & Cooper CMO Wouter Baert for all of the furry details. (Agency: The Disobedient, in-house).
Building an Imaginary World
Edgard & Cooper maintains consistency across its event campaigns, but not in the traditional sense. Rather than sticking to a specific aesthetic or tone, it creates cohesion by ensuring each program falls in line with the fantasy world showcased in its If Pets Could Cook ads.
“Campaigns can have their own visual world, and their own sub-world, too, as long as it still feels like it’s us and it belongs to that imaginary world,” says Baert.
Committing to the Calendar
The company didn’t just create one holiday; it built an entire calendar, and stayed the course on its long-term engagement strategy by bringing it to life through a series of experiences.
“When we talk about that joyful, imaginary world that you’re experiencing with your pets, if that is a one-off, it’s not really a world,” he says. “So for something like the Pet Holiday Calendar to actually work, you have to really commit to it. And it has to be multiple things; it has to grow on people.”
Comical, Relatable Event Formats
According to Baert, the event formats and touchpoints that have been most effective are the ones that have felt like a wink and a nod to pet parents.
“What resonates the best, and what I always want to hear from people, is that it feels like an inside joke, that people who have a pet have this ‘aha’ moment where it feels like you get pets, and it made me smile,” he says.
He points to The Ball Ball, hosted in London, during which dogs were the guests of honor and arrived in their finest attire.
Among touchpoints was a giant bone-shaped ice sculpture (“You’re already thinking about pets wanting to lick that sculpture”) and a ball pit set inside an elegant fountain installation (“Pets always want to go to the fancy places that they shouldn’t,” Baert says).
A dog‑friendly banquet table, live music from “Bridgerton’s” string quartet and even a “formal” portrait moment were also part of the experience.
That “inside joke” spirit was also alive during Chew Toy Remembrance Day, which Edgard & Cooper commemorated with a live Viking Funeral in East London.
Ahead of the event, social media users could sign up to give their pet’s retired chew toy a proper sendoff on the brand’s small-scale version of a Viking ship by explaining why the item “deserved the most epic final chapter.”
On the day of the funeral, the items were piled into the vessel, set ablaze and pushed into the sea for their trip to “Valhalla” (the toys that didn’t burn were later donated to a shelter partner). And to ensure a safe stunt, fire elements were handled by licensed professionals under a “leave no trace” policy.
Social and Digital Celebrations
Celebrating holidays online with pet parents is also key to the approach.
Take the Top Cat Awards, which are earned by consumers who enter the program across categories like “Best Cat/Parent Lookalike” and “Most Judgy Stare.”
Or the brand’s political apology initiative around Iceland’s historic dog ban during Pet Rights Week, which included an official petition demanding that Reykjavik say it’s sorry for prohibiting dogs in the city from 1924-1984. (The brand also planted posters promoting the cause in high-traffic locations, like outside the Royal Danish Embassy in London and across the street from Big Ben.)
Tracking Brand- and Campaign-Level KPIs
The brand tracks its event and engagement success through two lenses.
At the campaign level, one sentence defines the metric: “We want remarkable creatives seen by millions.” To gauge impact, the brand references a chart that’s divided into four phrases: It’s boring, it’s remarkable, it’s only seen by our employees, and it’s seen by millions.
At a higher level, E&C tracks traditional full-funnel data across awareness, consideration and trial. But Baert says the company is most concerned with defining success based on the bigger picture.
“We’re just worried about, if you zoom out across everything we’re doing, are these metrics moving in the right direction?” he says. “Why? Because I want us to be so good at marketing that we’re terrible at measuring it, that we’re doing so many great things that no one knows what’s driving it—but it’s going up.”
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