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. So rather than relying on the one or two shelter homes within your local area to try and fix the problem, we needed change on a national scale. 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 each specific audience for a specific reason, rather than rely on a traditional scattered shotgun approach. This way we could generate much greater PR throughout every stage of the campaign. We began with 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

This became Australia’s most successful rehoming campaign to date with 26 million media impressions and over 200,000 bowls of dog food donated via Facebook ‘Likes’. Dog-A-Like became No. 1 App in the Australian iTunes store and we received 5.8 million Facebook users during the campaign. Due to an unprecedented following, the ‘Underdogs’ documentary was also aired on national television. But the best part is, we exceeded our campaign target by achieving a 36% increase in the number of dogs adopted. That's over 2,200 dogs every single month that found a new home and a new start in life.

Execution

Every media channel was selected for a specific reason and targeted a specific audience. For example, we knew 81% of Australians used online search engines as their number one way of sourcing products or services. So we built an exclusive canine search engine that centralised every single shelter dog into one database. We knew Bondi Beach was Australia’s most popular. So we lined the entire 1.5km foreshore with shelter dog profiles and encouraged people to adopt them. We knew over 90% of Australian phone owners downloaded apps on a regular basis. So we created Dog-A-Like, an app that finds your perfect match and lets you adopt them. And we also knew Australians downloaded over half a billion YouTube clips every year. So we created ‘Underdogs’, an 8 part online branded documentary that followed the lives of five Underdogs from homelessness to their forever loving homes.

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, a fun and social app and a documentary.