FreeHand Social Media | Case Studies

The Challenge

Start-up FreeHand had a unique business model: for every bag of dog food sold, they donated one to an animal shelter. Since their priorities were donations and not marketing, an organic community with tools for sharing and building virality was crucial to the success of the brand.

Create Digital Grassroots Movement

As a new company with limited media dollars, FreeHand wanted to grow a dedicated and engaged audience to become brand advocates to the good work they were doing. We leveraged social media platforms to build the community and a variety of tools to get advocates to naturally share and amplify the brand message.

Social Media

Community Management, Organic Posts, Paid Campaigns, Contests, Apps

Want to build a community of brand fanatics?

The Prove Approach

Build a Community of Advocates

FreeHand had a message that clearly resonated with dog owners and people passionate about rescuing animals, so we built a community around those values. Post content included photos and videos of dogs, educational information about caring for your dog, and highlighted rescue efforts. We built campaigns around various giveaways using social media platforms like Woobox to help generate excitement and virality.

We built a custom Facebook App called the "FreeHand Corps" that rewarded followers and customers for every brand touchpoint. By doing something as simple as sharing a post or sending in a photo of their own dog, followers could accumulate points for FreeHand brand swag, spreading brand awareness offline too.

Facebook followers could register their dogs (and their email addresses) via the FreeHand Corps Facebook App

Used paid media to initially build following and get momentum
Maintained an editorial calendar that tracked engagement by posts to optimize content
Implemented promotions and contests to give followers sharable content
Build a custom app to give followers and customers rewards for their interactions with FreeHand

Built library of user-generated content

Both organic posts and apps encouraged users to submit their own content, like dog photos and how they help their own communities
Empowered passionate animal lovers to give back to their community

Posts included resources and educational topics around volunteering and contributing to animal rescues
Rewarded engagement across all touchpoints

The FreeHand Corps app gave followers "points" that were redeemable for swag and product in exchange for every brand interaction, including sharing posts, sending dog photos and videos, purchasing a bag of FreeHand dog food, and finding easter eggs on the website