Pets at Home Declares the Nation Is Better With Pets
Pets at Home launched 'We're better with pets' in the United Kingdom in May 2021, a film campaign created by The&Partnership London that repositions the retailer as an empathetic, end-to-end pet-care partner spanning veterinary services, grooming, and expert advice rather than simply a product destination.
The campaign's central proposition is both straightforward and emotionally loaded. Pets ask a great deal of their owners — early morning walks, muddy paws tracked across clean floors, cage cleaning, and the particular anxiety of watching an animal fall ill — and yet they return more than they demand. That reciprocal relationship sits at the heart of the creative, with the brand positioning itself not as the star of the exchange but as the knowledgeable, supportive presence standing behind the owner throughout it. The tagline 'We're better with pets' operates on two registers simultaneously: a statement about human wellbeing and an implicit promise about the quality of the experience Pets at Home enables.
In terms of campaign mechanics, the work centres on a single film asset, classified within the retail services category, that uses relatable, slice-of-life owner-and-pet situations rather than celebrity endorsement or overt symbolic imagery. The narrative moves through the texture of genuine pet ownership — its inconveniences, its worries, and its profound compensations — before landing on Pets at Home's suite of services as the practical expression of that understanding. As reported by More About Advertising in June 2021, the campaign represented The&Partnership's first major work for the brand, marking a meaningful shift in how Pets at Home chose to present itself to UK audiences. The United Kingdom's pet-owning public, already deeply familiar with the brand's retail footprint, received a creative argument for why that footprint matters beyond the transactional. Clapboard scores this campaign 59 out of 100.
Pets at Home identified a consumer insight that extends well beyond product preference. Pets function as sources of emotional regulation — comfort during difficulty, companionship in isolation — and any brand capable of credibly aligning with that relationship holds a significant advantage over competitors who communicate purely on price or range. The 2021 campaign exploited that insight directly, speaking to the emotional reality of pet ownership in the United Kingdom before introducing services as its logical conclusion.
The competitive context makes this strategic move particularly deliberate. In the UK pet retail market, Pets at Home competes with both specialist rivals such as Jollyes and the growing own-label pet ranges of major grocery multiples including Tesco and Sainsbury's. Differentiating on product alone is increasingly difficult when supermarket shelves carry comparable pet food at competitive price points. The decision to compete on understanding and relationship rather than assortment or value reflects a mature reading of where durable brand loyalty is actually built in this category.
The financial backdrop reinforces the scale of the opportunity. Pets at Home reported £1.14 billion in group sales for the 52 weeks ending 25 March 2021, according to retailsector.co.uk, a figure that demonstrates the commercial weight behind the brand's ambition. Meanwhile, the UK pet-care sector was expanding rapidly: global pet industry sales reached a growing market in 2021, and within the United Kingdom the structural tailwinds of pandemic-era pet adoption had created a larger, more emotionally invested base of pet owners than at any prior point in the brand's history. The&Partnership's strategy channelled that moment — leaning into emotional resonance precisely when UK audiences were most primed to receive it. The campaign's positioning of Pets at Home as an end-to-end partner, encompassing veterinary care through the Vets4Pets network, grooming, and advisory services, gave the emotional argument a concrete commercial architecture to rest upon.
The creative approach of 'We're better with pets' relies on earned emotional authenticity rather than constructed sentiment. The film presents recognisable, imperfect moments from the lived experience of pet ownership in the United Kingdom — the 6am walk in the rain, the mess, the vet visit — before the warmth of the human-animal bond resolves each scene. This structure mirrors the rhetorical logic of the campaign's proposition: acknowledge the cost, then reveal the return.
As noted by More About Advertising in June 2021, The&Partnership chose to centre the creative on relatable owner-and-pet situations, deliberately avoiding celebrity endorsement or overt symbolism. That restraint is itself a craft decision. Campaigns built around famous faces risk redirecting attention away from the emotional dynamic the brand needs audiences to feel; by anchoring the film in anonymous, universally legible moments, The&Partnership kept focus on the relationship rather than the production. The narrative voice in the campaign's copy — 'If we're down, they lift us up. When we need a friend, they're by our side' — maintains the same plainspoken register, preferring directness to flourish.
The campaign's broader activation extended into out-of-home. A related execution titled 'Lifting London during Mental Health Week' entered Ocean Outdoor's 2021 Digital Creative Competition and won second prize, earning £500,000 in campaign airtime, as reported by Ocean Outdoor. This activation connected the core emotional proposition to a specific cultural moment — mental health awareness — demonstrating that the creative idea was built with sufficient flexibility to operate across formats and contexts beyond broadcast film.
Production credits for the primary 'We're better with pets' film campaign are not publicly documented in available sources. The&Partnership London is credited as the creating agency.
No verified campaign-attributed sales lift, revenue impact, or tracked brand-metric shift for 'We're better with pets' is publicly available for independent citation. What the public record does confirm is a meaningful award outcome connected to the campaign's wider activation.
The related 'Lifting London during Mental Health Week' execution won second prize in Ocean Outdoor's 2021 Digital Creative Competition, securing £500,000 in campaign airtime, as reported by Ocean Outdoor. That result speaks to the industry's assessment of the creative idea's quality and its resonance when applied to a culturally significant context. For a campaign characterised by More About Advertising as The&Partnership's first major work for Pets at Home, achieving recognition of that kind in its debut year represents a credible proof of concept for the agency-client relationship.
Structurally, the campaign demonstrates several effectiveness markers. The emotional narrative is clearly differentiated from transactional retail communication, addressing the loyalty-building challenge that pure product advertising cannot solve. The creative idea proved flexible enough to extend from broadcast film into competitive out-of-home without losing coherence. And the brand's decision to acknowledge the difficulty of pet ownership before celebrating its rewards creates the kind of honest framing that tends to generate stronger audience trust than idealised depictions alone. Against the backdrop of Pets at Home's £1.14 billion in group sales for the period ending March 2021, as reported by retailsector.co.uk, the campaign reflects a brand investing its creative resources in long-term emotional positioning rather than short-cycle promotional mechanics. Clapboard scores this campaign 59 out of 100.
'We're better with pets' is a 2021 UK film campaign by Pets at Home, created by The&Partnership London. It centres on the reciprocal bond between people and their pets, acknowledging ownership's demands while celebrating the emotional support animals provide, and positions Pets at Home as a trusted partner across veterinary, grooming and retail services.
The&Partnership London created the campaign for Pets at Home. As reported by More About Advertising in June 2021, it represented The&Partnership's first major work for the brand, marking a strategic shift in how Pets at Home communicated its broader pet-care services to audiences in the United Kingdom.
A related activation, 'Lifting London during Mental Health Week', won second prize in Ocean Outdoor's 2021 Digital Creative Competition, earning £500,000 in campaign airtime, as reported by Ocean Outdoor. This extended the core campaign's emotional proposition into an out-of-home format tied to Mental Health Awareness Week in the United Kingdom.
The campaign moves Pets at Home beyond product-led retail communication to compete on emotional understanding and relationship. In the United Kingdom, where rivals such as Jollyes and supermarket own-label pet ranges compete strongly on price, this strategy builds loyalty on a basis that transactional advertising cannot replicate.
Clapboard scores 'We're better with pets' 59 out of 100. The campaign demonstrates clear strategic differentiation and emotional coherence, with the primary structural strengths lying in its narrative flexibility and honest framing of pet ownership, though no verified performance metrics are publicly available to confirm audience impact.
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