Bark

Abstract

In the current marketing mix, there's no absence of 'pet management' apps. Apps that let you track your pets fitness, feeding your pet, and making an entire curriculum for your dog/cat. That being said, these apps inevitably don't save the user any time. Nor are they entertaining. Holistically speaking, these applications lack modern ui/ux fundamentals, and funnel into being electronic pet schedules that dictate your time more than your own.

Bark wanted to take a different approach. Unifying the pet-owning experience, allowing you to do the typical scheduling of its competitors, but allowing you to pick out food, shop for toys, find the newest and biggest parks that others on Bark recommend. Ultimately saving you time having to search these things somewhere else.

Rebranding Bark

The intention is to keep pet ownership simple. I feel that this logo reflects that. With pastel blues and greens that invite user empathy with naturalistic, calming color associations. The primary challenge was reflecting the values and while still remaining representative of Bark. Utilizing a simple and softer shape language, the design is flexible and scalable across numerous layouts - web, mobile, print, etc.

Goals

Bark is a new app that offers a different experience to other pet scheduling/management applications. Starting from a grassroots approach, the Bark team needed to garner an audience and drive awareness to ultimately convert to app installations and subscriptions.

Social media and email marketing are large focuses as awareness drivers, in order to create a loyal fanbase and diversify the marketing channel portfolio of the business. Via social media and email, Bark would be able to attract their target users from a broad bucket and then bring these individuals into consideration and ultimately conversion through its value propositions.

Collateral and Application

Firstly, starting from the ground-up and building the Bark brand identity (not only through visual style, but also in messaging, tone, and voice). We opted for a simple vector style with softer shapes, which return invitational attitudes and is easy on the eyes. As it pertains to brand voice and messaging, we designed campaigns and advertising around pet related issues, statistics, and topics to intrigue the viewer and invite them to learn more. On our e-commerce platform, we leverage clear CTAs, making it a simple and straightforward process for leads to convert.

Using a combination of organic and paid social media advertising, we generated brand awareness of the application onto several platforms. Building pages on Facebook, Instagram, & X, we brought our engaging messaging to these sites and told Bark's brand story effectively and concisely. Through these efforts, we generated earned media, a healthy audience of targeted individuals who can substantiate Bark's reputability, and a growth in impressions across all platforms.

We constructed a sign-up page for email communications, then nurtured these leads, gathering information on consumer needs to further segment and cater to these consumers, and maintained consumer interest through consistent messaging leading up to the applications full release. We sent a wide berth of email content, depending on their stage in the customer journey and pipeline. New signups would be onboarded, given a drip campaign communicating Bark's value proposition and how the consumer would benefit from waiting for the applications release. We would then send videos, newsletters, blogs, and other resources that our audience would find interesting (cheap ways to manage pets, cost-friendly alternatives to dog-sitters, the newest and best pet-related gadgets). From then we would send messaging and campaigns on new features, product releases, giveaways, sharing community content and advertising a loyalty program to support customer retention and lifetime value.

Results and Discussion

Working on bark from ideation to release, I was able to holistically approach it's marketing efforts, building a unique position in the market focused on its branding, and product value. The insights gathered from its initial release would be critical to re-marketing efforts, and cross-selling other potential products in its lineup. Through these marketing efforts, we would reach high CTR and low CPI. These results would be nurtured through email marketing focused on customer retention, identifying and solving customer pain points and making the journey through our various touchpoints as seamless as possible. These leads would be generated through interest on our social media accounts, word of mouth, and influencer marketing.