Increasing brand awareness by conveying genuine emotions through digital channels.

For 9United, the parent company behind Connox, DesignBestseller, AmbienteDirect, and Flinders.nl, the launch of the HAY Dogs Collection marked a unique opportunity.

It was the first time the group planned to run a coordinated marketing campaign across all four of its independent design retailers.

Until then, each store had operated autonomously with its own identity, audience, and communication style.

As a result, few consumers realized these brands were connected under the same umbrella.

The goal was clear: increase brand awareness for HAY while strengthening the shared visibility of 9United’s design ecosystem.

The challenge: build a unified, emotionally resonant campaign that could connect four distinct retail platforms, each with its own systems and audiences, on a limited media budget and without relevant prior campaign experience to build on.

We started with a simple belief: the strongest digital emotions are born offline.

Instead of forcing reach, we focused on creating real moments worth sharing, tactile, authentic, and visually striking experiences around the new HAY Dogs collection.

These moments were designed to be photographed, felt, and naturally extended into the digital space.

By combining this experiential approach with a carefully orchestrated cross-platform rollout, we managed to align four independent retailers under one coherent campaign narrative.

Every channel, from paid social to search amplification, contributed to a shared emotional arc that carried their identity beyond transactional ads.

The campaign achieved over 4 million impressions at an average cost per click of just €0.06, with more than 250,000 engaged users across all platforms.

The content resonated far beyond its initial scope, driving high levels of organic sharing and engagement, proving that authentic emotion still outperforms algorithmic reach.

What began as a small, experimental campaign turned into a nationwide moment of brand connection.

The result: a clear signal that HAY’s brand power, when translated through shared emotion, can evolve from awareness into measurable long-term growth.