Bayer: advert-body-1 by The Red Consultancy

Red Consultancy created the latest Insta-celeb, turning a snail into a social media hit that took the country by storm with celebrity fans and thousands of followers.

@DangerouSnail25 had a secret….he was a carrier of lungworm and had been created for Bayer to raise awareness of the parasite amongst unsuspecting dog owners. A video revealing his message amassed over 200,000 views.

Red Consultancy chose Instagram as their initial research showed pet owners are obsessed with sharing images of their pets online. Nearly one in five have social media channel dedicated to their pup and #dogsofinstagram attracts over 750k posts each day.

To make best use of budget, Red Consultancy’s strategy was to create digital content which could be pushed out socially (specifically targeting dog owners) which would also give us content to bounce into traditional wide-reaching national and regional editorial alongside vet and pet owner press.

As lungworm itself is unrecognizable to dog owners we focused on the carriers of the disease – namely slugs and snails. The resulting ‘insta-snail’ was named

@DangerousSnail25 because 25 varieties of slugs and snails carry lungworm giving us a neat hook back to our message.

Working with a celebrated wildlife photographer, we created an Instagram feed full of beautifully shot images of our snails with witty, topical conversation to give @DangerousSnail25 a charming and cheeky personality. Once @DangerousSnail had a decent profile we revealed the true purpose with a fast-cut video compilation with @DangerousSnail confessing he carries the lungworm larvae.

Initial results are impressive - engagement with content was fantastic, and dog-owners have clicked through to an online lungworm map to check for lungworm in their area & vets across the country reported dog-owners actively asked them about the campaign.