Pedigree’s advertising line “everything we do is for the love of dogs” is not just a strapline, but the philosophy behind the entire team and leadership positioning that differentiates the brand. In Australia a dog is euthanised every 50 minutes because it doesn’t have a home. The Pedigree Adoption Drive (PAD) was set up to help these “shelter dogs” as part of a long term goal to increase consumer preference for Pedigree. However, two years after launch PAD had only saved a few hundred dogs. The 2009 target was to double awareness of PAD from 15% to 30% and to persuade dog lovers to adopt 3,000 animals.
Pedigree recognised that people don’t simply buy a dog; they fall in love with a new family member. However, most dog owners don’t consider going to shelters because they consider the dogs there to be damaged goods. Although once people discovered the stories behind each dog they were more inclined to adopt.
It was apparent that dog life-stories had the power to overcome negative perceptions, just like those of humans. Pedigree needed to personalise the plight of pooches in the shelter and tell their stories. People had become immune to highly emotive TV charity ads so the stories needed to be brought into people’s daily lives.
Pedigree created thousands of life sized bright yellow cut-out dogs and displayed them in public spaces. People were encouraged to take them home and read the story written on them. The canine stories were told within major family TV shows with live audiences. Famous presenters hugged the dogs to show they weren’t damaged goods.
Pedigree adapted Channel Ten’s station IP to include stories of new dogs coming onto “the team”. The stories were also told on Facebook, Yahoo and in Australia’s newspapers. Each week for 6 months, 12 stories were featured with Pedigree only paying for a branded strip below the editorial.
Awareness of PAD reached 32% and 3,365 dogs were adopted after just two months. The campaign gave 54% of people a more favourable opinion of Pedigree.
Pedigree Dog Adoption Australia
The Creative Use of Media Award
- Brand:
- Pedigree
- Brand owner:
- Mars
- Category:
- The Creative Use of Media Award
- Region:
- Australia
- Date:
- July – August 2009
- Media Channel:
- Ambient, TV, Print, Online, Integrated
Please nominate a maximum of five favourite case studies to put forward for the People’s Award. They will appear in the “My Top Five” box on the top right. If you change your mind about any of the campaigns, simply click “remove”.
Cream (www.creamglobal.com) is an online service for media and marketing professionals that indexes and analyses best practice examples of brand communications from around the world. Cream’s user-friendly interface grants access to a library of over 2,500 case studies of leading marcomms innovation, collected from more than 250 expert spotters in every major market around the world.
A suite of comparative tools allows you to benchmark the quality of your ideas against these market leading examples, learn from best practice and keep up to date with the latest trends.
Daily news and analysis, reports and insight from the Cream editorial teams combines with the online library to provide you with competitive advantage, all via your desktop.
