The Campaign

Less and less people are visiting shelter homes these days as a place to adopt a dog. This is due to a number of factors including false public perceptions about shelter dogs being damaged. And if we couldn’t bring people to the shelter dogs, we’d bring the shelter dogs to the people. Creatively, we wanted to make searching for a dog simple, accessible and as fun as it possibly could be. We also had to be clever with our media channels, targeting specific audiences rather than rely on a traditional scattered shotgun approach. This way we could generate much greater PR throughout every stage of the campaign. And with celebrity ambassadors such as Rachael Finch, crowned Australia’s 2009 Miss Universe, on board to help spread the message and dispel the myth about shelter dogs being damaged, we achieved the PR we hoped for. We created a single outdoor event that generated 22 million media impressions. We then drove this entire audience online where they found the rest of our activity including an app, a centralised search engine and an online documentary. In the end, this became Australia’s single most successful rehoming campaign to date.

The Brief

The objectives of the campaign were to firstly educate the public and dispel any myths around shelter dogs being damaged. We also wanted to prove that these dogs really are just like every other dog out there – loving, loyal and longing to please. In terms of goals, we wanted to greatly reduce the number of dogs rehomed and improve on last year’s efforts of adopting more than 4000 dogs.

Results

Successfully, over 60% of the dogs on the day were adopted and this four-hour event reached over 22 million people via earned national media. Considering that Australia has a population of only a little over 22 million people, that’s quite significant. Better still, the education and PR gained from this event helped to rehome thousands of more dogs throughout the campaign.

Execution

We knew Australia’s most popular beach was Bondi, attracting up to 40,000 people on any given Saturday. So to give these dogs a better chance of adoption, in one day we transformed Bondi Beach into Underdog Day. 1.5km of yellow branded dog leads were tied along Bondi’s entire foreshore (also one of Australia’s most popular dog walking tracks). At the end of each lead was the image and profile of an actual shelter dog waiting to be adopted. And with a unique code attached to each profile, people were encouraged to enter the code online to find out more about each dog and adopt them.

The Situation

The Pedigree Adoption Drive aims to rehome as many shelter dogs as possible. Sadly, over 100,000 dogs are still needlessly euthanised every year in Australia because most people think they are damaged and therefore find it difficult visiting shelter homes to adopt.

The Strategy

Adopting a shelter dog used to be difficult and time consuming with different shelters responding and behaving in different ways. Some were online. Some were not. Together with the negative stigma already attached to shelter dogs, this made the whole process way too hard for the public. So in order to gain as much positive national PR awareness and communication as possible, we had to first change the entire adoption procedure. That meant consolidating information on every shelter dog in the country and directing everyone to one central online location. This allowed people to now search instantly by breed, size and location thus giving every dog a greater chance of adoption. Once this was achieved, it was then a matter of keeping people entertained and educated offline and online via an outdoor live event complete with Pedigree Adoption Drive celebrity ambassadors.