Title | AMERICAN PITBULL |
Brand | MONIKAS DOGGIE RESCUE |
Product / Service | ANIMAL RESCUE |
Category | C03. Illustration |
Entrant | M&C SAATCHI Sydney, AUSTRALIA |
Entrant Company | M&C SAATCHI Sydney, AUSTRALIA |
Advertising Agency | M&C SAATCHI Sydney, AUSTRALIA |
Name | Company | Position |
---|---|---|
Ben Welsh | M&C Saatchi | Executive Creative Director |
Ronojoy Ghosh | M&C Saatchi | Art Director/Illustrator |
Daryl Corps | M&C Saatchi | Art Director |
Sri Mogeri | M&C Saatchi | Copywriter |
Pearla Ordillo | M&C Saatchi | Production Coordinator |
Every dog needs a home. Equally every home could do with a dog. Our brief was to drive adoptions and fostering of shelter dogs for 2015 with this simple message. The target audience was dog lovers, primarily families. The decision to take a graphic approach as opposed to showing shelter to achieve cut through came from the agency after careful consideration.
Monika's Doggie Rescue is a registered charity that believes in saving and re-homing as many dogs as they can from the council pounds. For many years Monika Biernacki and a group of volunteers have been rescuing dogs from death row and successfully re-homing them with permanent and loving owners. In 2001 the charity DoggieRescue.com was established. Monika's Doggie Rescue has a NO KILL policy so all dogs they get from the pound are re-housed or stay with them for their life. This policy includes accepting former DoggieRescue dogs back if their owners discard them. Over a year we save about 500 dogs. The operation depends on volunteers to help the charity, hence budgets are very low.
To get cut through on a small budget, we decided to buck the category norm which was to show the shelter animals. Instead we adopted a more graphic approach to appeal to dog lovers by creating an endearing icon for adoption. Doggie rescue's platform has always been about showing the benefits of dog ownership. 'Home is where the dog is' was borne out of this strategy. The icon which combined a dog and a house was used as a campaign device. To appeal to different types of owners, each execution showed different a breed, with the background colour reflecting the breed. For instance, for Golden retriever, we used yellow. For American Pitbull, we used white.
Since the campaign broke in Feb 2015, it's still early days. But the initial response has been encouraging. Adoptions went up 9% in the months of February and March. Visitors to the shelter responded positively to the campaign and unanimously agreed that the visual tugged their heartstrings.