ANIMAL STRIKE

Bronze Spike
TitleANIMAL STRIKE
BrandPAW JUSTICE
Product / ServiceCHARITY
EntrantDDB GROUP NEW ZEALAND Auckland, NEW ZEALAND
Entrant Company DDB GROUP NEW ZEALAND Auckland, NEW ZEALAND
Advertising Agency DDB GROUP NEW ZEALAND Auckland, NEW ZEALAND
Media Agency OMD Auckland, NEW ZEALAND

Credits

Name Company Position
Andy Fackrell DDB Group New Zealand Executive Creative Director
Shane Bradnick DDB Group New Zealand Creative Director
Christie Cooper DDB Group New Zealand Copywriter
James Conner DDB Group New Zealand Art Director
Jenny Travers DDB Group New Zealand Account Director
Jason Vertongen DDB Group New Zealand Lead Designer
Sam Schrey DDB Group New Zealand Digital Designer
Lucinda Sherborne DDB Group New Zealand Head Of Planning
Paul Pritchard DDB Group New Zealand Digital Director
Dov Tombs DDB Group New Zealand Producer
Paul Myles DDB Group New Zealand Developer
Cameron Crosby DDB Group New Zealand Lead Developer
Toby Morris DDB Group New Zealand Illustrator
Nikita Kearsley DDB Group New Zealand Creative Art Buyer
Julz Lane DDB Group New Zealand Production Manager
Renee Lam DDB Group New Zealand Designer
Michiel Cox DDB Group New Zealand Digital Planner
Jack Murphy DDB Group New Zealand Social Planner
Sean Brown DDB Group New Zealand/Mango Senior Account Director
Beat PR Additional company
Eleisha Balmer DDB Group New Zealand/Mango Senior Account Manager
Rob Galluzzo Finch Executive Producer
Michael Hilliard Finch Executive Producer
Camilla Dehnert Finch Producer
Bruce Everard Finch Production Designer

The Campaign

The New Zealand government passed a new law that pushed the producers of legal party drugs to safety test them on dogs. Animal-rights activists, Paw Justice, asked us to create a campaign that would encourage the public to force the government to review this law. We created an animal strike, with the aim of blocking animal content in New Zealand for one day. Born from the knowledge that people enjoy being entertained by animals online, the strike was designed to take these moments away.

Success of the Campaign

We did it! We changed the law. Due to an immense amount of public pressure, Prime Minister John Key announced, “There will be no animal testing, either locally or internationally to support the application for a physco active substance”. In only a few days we received over 58,000 petition signatures. We spent less than $5000 yet received a potential reach of over 22million. 98% of all those visited the website went on to sign the petition. 78% visited the website through social media channels. Over 110,000 people and their animals took part in the strike online either by uploading a strike message or participating on our facebook page. #animalstrike trended on twitter on the day of the strike.

Describe how the campaign/entry was launched and executed across each channel in the order of implementation.

We cleverly leveraged the little media we had. We collaborated with YouTube to block popular animal videos using unskippable prerolls, utilizing popular animal search terms. At the same time we worked with TV stations who didn’t play animal shows on the day and placed posters in zoos and near dog parks. We also used street posters and press ads as well as PR to create more awareness. But there is so much animal content online we couldn’t create the strike through paid media alone. Everything we did led people to a website where they could sign the petition then download a strike toolkit with html files, videos and jpegs that they could upload to their social media profiles, youtube channels, blogs and websites to block their own animal and spread the strike through social media. All mediums worked together seamlessly to create the strike, gain awareness and spread our petition all at the same time.