Life Uncut co-host and ToniMay founder Laura Byrne teams up with Lyka Pet Food for an Instagram Stories campaign that turns ordinary dog mealtimes into trusted, conversion-ready content.
Some brand partnerships work because a creator has reach. Others work because a creator has trust. The new collaboration between Laura Byrne and Lyka Pet Food sits firmly in the second category. It relies less on audience size and more on the credibility of a familiar voice talking about something she genuinely uses at home.
MN2S facilitated a partnership between Laura Byrne and Lyka Pet Food, pairing one of Australia’s most recognised lifestyle broadcasters with the country’s biggest fresh dog food brand. The campaign centred on Instagram Stories content built around real feeding moments rather than polished product shots, with a clear path to conversion built directly into the creative.
Why Laura Byrne Was the Right Fit
Laura Byrne has spent the best part of a decade building one of Australia’s most trusted media profiles. She first found national fame as the winner of The Bachelor Australia in 2017, but her career has grown well beyond that platform. Since 2019, she has co-hosted the Life Uncut podcast with Brittany Hockley, a show that has built a loyal, highly engaged community around honest, unfiltered conversation. The podcast now sits with LiSTNR and continues to rank inside Australia’s top ten most downloaded shows.
Byrne also hosts the drive radio show The Pick Up on the Southern Cross Austereo network, again alongside Hockley, and has run her jewellery label ToniMay since 2010, as detailed on her professional profile. That combination matters here. Byrne is not simply an influencer posting sponsored content. She is a founder who understands brand building from the inside, a broadcaster trusted with daily airtime, and a mother of three navigating exactly the kind of household decisions Lyka wants to influence.
That last point is the campaign’s real engine. The creative leaned on natural, in-home storytelling around feeding a family dog, and few creators can sell that authenticity as convincingly as someone whose entire public career has been built on relatability. Audiences already trust Byrne’s judgement on what belongs in her home. Extending that trust to her dog’s food bowl is a logical, low-friction step rather than a stretch.
Inside the Campaign: From Story Slides to a Discount Code
The activation took shape as a four-slide Instagram Stories set, combining on-screen messaging, brand tagging and overlay graphics with a UTM-tracked link and a discount code for new customers. Every element pointed toward measurable action rather than passive awareness, which is increasingly the standard for creator deals in the direct-to-consumer pet space.
The production process also reflected good campaign discipline. Story content was shared for approval in mid-May, with Lyka requesting specific revisions before signing off. The brand then approved the final cut with a small number of amendments, and the content went live on Sunday 7 June. Lyka followed up with a request for post-live insights shortly after launch, and Byrne supplied performance materials in response. That sequence, brief, refine, approve, launch, report, is exactly the kind of structured workflow that turns a single piece of sponsored content into a repeatable partnership model.
The Brand: Why Lyka Built Its Reputation on Substance, Not Hype
Lyka has grown into Australia’s biggest fresh dog food brand, delivering more than 50 million meals to Australian dogs since launching. The company was founded by Anna Podolsky after she began cooking fresh meals for her own dog, Lyka, and noticed a marked improvement in the dog’s health. Co-founder Dr Matthew Muir, an integrative veterinarian, helped turn that personal experiment into a business built on board-certified veterinary nutrition.
The brand’s credibility rests on more than marketing language. Lyka’s recipes are formulated to follow AAFCO and FEDIAF nutritional guidelines, with 85 to 95% of ingredients sourced from Australian producers and meals gently cooked to preserve nutritional value. A University of Sydney study found that dogs eating Lyka showed signs of healthier gut function compared with dogs fed extruded kibble, giving the brand a genuine clinical reference point rather than an unverified claim.
Lyka has also built sustainability into its operations, holding B Corp certification with an Impact Score of 82.6 against a median of 50.9 for ordinary businesses, and winning the Telstra Best of Business Award for National Sustainability. For a brand built on trust and transparency, those credentials matter just as much as the food itself when it comes to convincing a sceptical, health-conscious pet owner to switch. Lyka maintains an active presence across Instagram, YouTube and Facebook, with each platform supporting a different stage of the customer journey.
The Strategy: Why Word Choice Mattered More Than Usual
One detail in this campaign deserves more attention than it might first appear to warrant. Lyka asked that messaging use the term “meal plan” rather than “subscription.” That is not a minor stylistic preference. Subscription fatigue is a well-documented friction point across direct-to-consumer categories, and the word itself can trigger hesitation before a potential customer has even considered the product.
Reframing the same commitment as a meal plan shifts the emphasis from a recurring charge to an ongoing act of care for the dog. It is a small adjustment with a real psychological effect, and it shows how seriously DTC health brands now treat language at a granular level. Lyka also requested a more positive, nutrition-led caption on one story frame, prioritising what the food does well over what it avoids. Both choices point to a brand that understands creator content succeeds or fails on tone, not just on reach.
The Wider Picture: Why Premium Pet Brands Lean on Creator Trust
This partnership reflects a broader shift happening across the premium pet category. As more Australian pet owners move away from processed kibble toward fresh, vet-formulated alternatives, brands need spokespeople who can demonstrate real-life use rather than simply state product benefits. A lifestyle podcaster preparing dinner for her own dog on camera does more to build belief than a studio-shot advertisement ever could.
It also reflects how creator marketing in the pet and family lifestyle space increasingly mirrors performance marketing in its structure. UTM links, discount codes and post-campaign reporting are now standard expectations, not bonus extras, even for content that looks and feels organic. Brands want the warmth of creator storytelling alongside the accountability of a paid media channel, and this campaign was built with both in mind from the outset.
For Lyka, partnering with a creator whose daily life already centres on family, home and authenticity gave the brand a believable entry point into Australian living rooms. For Byrne, it extended a brand-partnership track record built across years of trusted, integrated content. Together, the collaboration offers a useful template for how fresh food and wellness brands can convert a single piece of Stories content into a credible, repeatable case for switching.