TELUS Critter Comforts Program

With the goal to increase awareness of its contributions to Canadians’ wellbeing, TELUS enlisted NATIONAL to develop a strategic outside–of-the-box campaign to drive earned media attention while differentiating TELUS from its competitors. The objective was to elevate awareness of TELUS as a leader in social purpose, reinforce its commitments to driving wellbeing and generate brand affinity with Canadians.
NATIONAL identified a whitespace for TELUS as a champion for wellbeing and driving meaningful social change while leveraging its unique branding proposition, critters (animals that have been an integral part of TELUS’ brand iconography/identity for 20+ years). NATIONAL and TELUS produced the Critter Comforts Playlist, an always-on stream of TELUS critter videos that incorporated a view-based charitable donation component to serve as a destination for audiences to feel good and do good while streaming beloved critter content.
The playlist was supported by an integrated marketing-communications campaign, rooted in data from a custom research study commissioned on the impact animals have on Canadians’ wellbeing. The campaign included earned and paid media, an influencer program, and TELUS’ owned social media to promote the Critter Comforts playlist.
Through 750K+ views across YouTube and Optik-TV within two weeks of launch, the Critter Comforts playlist helped Canadians unwind, incentivized social sharing, surpassing the $100k donation goal for animal-based charities across the country.
To evaluate performance, TELUS sets benchmarks based on historical performance with stretch-targets to indicate high-impact campaigns. TELUS scores earned media success on a quality score based on number of hits, message pull-through, spokesperson quotes and brand mentions. The Critter Comforts campaign garnered 117 pieces of earned media coverage that averaged a quality score of 94, significantly outperforming the average score of 87 from similar campaigns in 2022. TELUS’ 33 influencer partners garnered 5,000,000+ views across campaign content, 94,000+ engagements and an outstanding click-thru rate of 2%.
TELUS’ Critter Comforts was a thoughtful and innovative campaign that connected with Canadians through a data-driven approach, pulling on their heartstrings while putting TELUS at the forefront of their positive brand experience. This campaign exemplifies the highest quality communications, shown in the impressive results above.