Celebrating success ahead of the
Veterinary Marketing Association Awards
We have great memories of the Veterinary Marketing Association Awards.
This goes back over a decade to Justin winning the prestigious New Marketing Talent award in 2013 during his White Cross Vets days.
And in 2025 it came full circle, with Andy one of two finalists for the 2025 New Marketing Talent award, as well as the inaugural winner of the VMAzing award.
There’s currently just the one VMAA trophy in the Practice Made Purrfect cabinet, but it’s one we’re particularly proud of, after we won the Practice Marketing award in collaboration with our friends at Stellar Vets in 2024.
Let’s take a look at what made Stellar’s winning entry so special.
Best Buddy Unlimited™: A health plan to be proud of
Stellar Vets is a unique practice, charting its own path while racking up accolades, Google reviews and percentage points on its EBITDA.
The centre of Stellar’s universe is Best Buddy Unlimited™, and the team are laser-focused on making the plan a no-brainer for their clients.
As a marketing team, that gives us a crystal clear brief – ensure every owner in Littlehampton has heard of Best Buddy Unlimited™!
So that’s exactly what we’ve done. To show the full extent of the marketing push we delivered, we’ll borrow from our successful VMAA Practice Marketing entry:
"Here’s a not exhaustive but perhaps exhausting list of everything we’ve done this year to market our plan: bollard covers around Littlehampton, pet feeding mats, consulting table mats, pin badges, email signatures, Facebook posts, appointment booking reminders, door drops, food bags, prescription bags, car stickers, on hold messaging and posters pretty much everywhere – on consult room doors and walls, in reception, on our windows and even in the local Post Office."
At the time of our entry we had over 900 pets on plan, up by over 35% in the 11 months from January to end of November. That was 33.5% of our active pet numbers and 21% of turnover.
For context, here’s what those figures look like at the time of writing in February 2025: over 1100 pets on plan, 37% of active pets, 30% of turnover.
Pretty impressive, we hope you agree.
Best Buddy Unlimited™
hits the streets
Taking inspo from Tinseltown
So the general idea of our entry was that we had an outstanding product, we’d done everything we could think of to push it and that the £££ were excellent.
Which is kind of the definition of what’s required for this kind of thing – but it doesn’t sound very exciting. Fortunately, when we were brainstorming how to sell our entry, it coincided with the announcement of that year’s Oscars winners.
And what was the winner of best film in 2023?
Everything, Everywhere, All At Once.
Now, admittedly, we didn’t market Best Buddy Unlimited™ in any parallel universes. But still, it felt like a great idea to hang our entry from.
As you can see above, we even had a best movie of our own, from Stellar founder David Hodges’ guerilla marketing campaign of jet washing Best Buddy Unlimited™ messaging into the Littlehampton streets.
Best supporting actor was shared between the tech solutions we use to provide a friction-free experience for Stellar clients, including PetsApp, iRecall and Vetstoria.
And the best actor gong could only go to David himself. Much deserved it was too.
It’s a pleasure to celebrate our hard work
The process of going for awards is one that we highly recommend to ambitious marketeers.
It forces you to reflect on what you do well – and where you have an opportunity to improve.
It shines a light on your hard work across the industry.
It’s incredibly rewarding to celebrate the fruits of your labour, even if that’s just among your team during the process of creating an application.
And it scratches the itch for our more competitive colleagues too!
We’ve become experts at putting award entries together over the years.
For example, at the 2025 SPVS Congress our clients made up two category winners out of three – although Stellar and Pennard Vets were edged out by Manchester Cat Clinic for the overall gong.
If you’d like advice and support putting your practice forward for an industry award – or if you have any other marketing queries – get in touch with our team below.
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