More than 100,000 pets are hospitalised or killed by deadly parasites each year in Australia.
That sad fact inspired Howatson+Company to create the implausibly smart ‘PetWatch’ for Petbarn. It’s a piece of work that shows just how important creative and strategic thinking can be for businesses, people and, indeed, pets.
It’s also a piece of work that won Howatson+Company one of its six trophies at the 2024 B&T Awards.
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“The idea came from a response to a real brief: to drive sales of flea, tick and worm medication at Petbarn,” Gavin Chimes, Howatson+Co’s chief creative officer told B&T, adding the deaths were a preventable tragedy with the correct medication.
“The problem is people have been trained to think that flea, tick and worms have a set “season” over summer. As result, the average pet parent leaves their pet unprotected against parasites for 5-8 months of the year,” said Chimes.
The team at Howatson+Co took inspiration from systems to track bushfires and surf conditions. As it stood, nothing similar existed for flea, tick or worms so the team set about creating it. What’s more, it was done entirely in-house.
“First, our tech team attempted to find if there were any existing data sources to identify flea, tick and worm (FTW) risks, but there simply wasn’t one that fit our criteria,” said Chimes.
He explained that data sources usually show the existence of FTW as a whole rather than going down to specific areas, there were no daily updates and, where data was available, its sources were often old.
But the team realised that PetBarn has access to data from Greencross vets. This proved to be a game changer.
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“Our tech team took four years of historical Greencross vet data and started mapping patterns to first assess feasibility. We weren’t just looking at “tick found on Tuesday” – we were correlating specific weather conditions (i.e. temperature, humidity, precipitation), greenspace and ABS geographical data; with parasite breeding cycles. When does 85 per cent humidity plus 28-degree heat equal tick explosion? That’s months of analysis right there,” he said.
Howatson+Co then built a supervised learning model that parsed all of this data and started to make predictions on the incidence of FTW risks. All of it was vetted by Greencross experts.
To get deeper insights, Howatson+Co also built a questionnaire into the utility to capture pet specifics (age, weight, current medications). This allowed the tool to offer better advice to pet parents. In order to make the insights easily understandable for owners, it mapped the country into red, amber and green zones.
“The customer journey mapping was also crucial. We worked out the full end-to-end experience. In PetWatch someone searches their suburb, sees the threat level, answers questions about their pet, gets personalised advice, then—and this is the clever bit—is linked directly to purchasing the exact products they need from Petbarn,” said Chimes.
The work was launched to Petbarn’s database of 2.7 million people as well as through its 200 physical stores around the country.
“The alert system was key. When parasite threats spike in your area, you get notifications via social, CRM, and text. Not spam but useful warnings based on real data,” said Chimes.
“Within three weeks we had 350,000 suburb searches. The real achievement? Making something this technically complex feel as simple as checking the weather. That’s the difference between a clever idea and a useful tool.”
But that’s the tech. Did this actually save pets’ lives? Or at least, sell some treatments?
In six months, PetWatch attracted 126,946 unique users who conducted 599,311 suburb searches and users spent an average of two minutes on the tool, with 51 seconds of active interaction, explained Chimes.
“Sales performance exceeded expectations,” he added.
“We outsold the 2023 panic-buying peak by 19.8 per cent, achieving an 11 per cent overall sales increase in preventative treatments. The tool continues to drive traffic with 520 daily visits and an 11 per cent monthly return rate, despite no paid media support.”
The launch campaign generated 104 pieces of earned media for Petbarn with a potential reach of $34 million and an advertising value equivalent of $338k.
“The most significant outcome was the 13.65 per cent decline in tick incidents reported at Greencross Vet clinics, reversing a multi-year upward trend. This represents a measurable improvement in pet health outcomes,” he said.
“PetWatch now functions as an ongoing data source and PR platform for Petbarn, providing regular insights about parasite threats that can be leveraged for continued marketing and communications efforts. The tool transformed preventative treatment from a seasonal category into a year-round consideration for pet owners,” said Chimes.
But why did it enter PetWatch into the B&T Awards?
“Because this isn’t just advertising, it’s utility,” he said.
“We didn’t make an ad about parasites. We built a warning system that saves pets’ lives. And happens to sell product. That’s what commercial creativity looks like now—solving real problems, not just talking about them.”
