CHILD REPLACEMENT PROGRAMME

Silver Spike

Case Film

Presentation Image

TitleCHILD REPLACEMENT PROGRAMME
BrandPEDIGREE
Product / ServiceDOG ADOPTION
CategoryG01. Integrated Campaign Led by Direct
EntrantCOLENSO BBDO Auckland, NEW ZEALAND
Idea Creation COLENSO BBDO Auckland, NEW ZEALAND
Media Placement STARCOM Auckland, NEW ZEALAND
PR IMPACT PR Auckland, NEW ZEALAND
Production EXIT FILMS Auckland, NEW ZEALAND

Credits

Name Company Position
Nick Worthington Colenso BBDO Creative Chairman
Andre Sallowicz Colenso BBDO Creative Director
Simon Vicars Colenso BBDO Creative Director
Andre Sallowicz Colenso BBDO Art Director
Simon Vicars Colenso BBDO Copywriter
Ahmad Salim Colenso BBDO Group Business Director
Abbi Barker Colenso BBDO Business Director
Alice Sopwith Colenso BBDO Account Manager
Ed Gunn Colenso BBDO Planner
Paul Gunn Colenso BBDO PR & Activation
Oliver Downs MARS NZ Marketing Director
Cormac van den Hoofdakker MARS NZ Marketing Manager - Pet
Maria Granados MARS NZ BRAND MANAGER – DOG & SPECIALTY
Mark Delvin Impact PR Director
Tim Freeman Colenso BBDO Experience Design Director
Will Thorrat Colenso BBDO Digital Producer
Dean Pomfrett Colenso BBDO Design Director
Craig Thompson Colenso BBDO User Experience Architect
David Arcus Colenso BBDO Lead Developer
Alex Krivenko Colenso BBDO Front-end Developer
Emma Tait Colenso BBDO Senior Product and Experience
Serena Fountain-Jones Colenso BBDO Senior Producer
Will Bailey Colenso BBDO Photographer
Jodi Davis Colenso BBDO Senior Mac Op
Reks Kok Colenso BBDO Retoucher
Jen Storey Colenso BBDO Head of Broadcast
Declan Cahill Exit Films Production Company Producer
Adam Gunser Exit Films Director
Pete Ritchie n/a Colourist

The Campaign

Empty Nest Syndrome is the loneliness parents feel when their children leave home. But while these parents sit in a quiet house lamenting how quickly their kids grew up, a dog sits in a shelter longing for a home. A home it can fill with love and companionship. Our idea was to connect these abandoned dogs with lonely parents. The Pedigree Child Replacement Programme targeted ‘Empty Nesters’ with a comically blunt campaign encouraging them to adopt a dog and ‘move on’ when their kids moved out. All work directed parents to our website (replacethem.co.nz) where they could match the characteristics of their child with the characteristics of an abandoned dog– ensuring the perfect replacement was found. To further incentivise adoption we offered parents the chance to turn their child’s old stuff into new stuff for their dog. Bedspreads were turned into dog beds, and beloved jackets into dog jackets.

Creative Execution

We launched The Pedigree Child Replacement Programme through three films that played in cinema, TV and online. When viewed online each film directly clicked through to replacethem.co.nz. Click through banners on Skype took our message to lonely parents, while geo-targeted mobile banners encouraged parents in airports to visit our site the moment their kids left the country. All work directed parents to replacethem.co.nz where they could match the characteristics of their child with the characteristics of a dog in a shelter – ensuring the perfect replacement was found. To further incentivise adoption we offered parents the chance to turn their child’s old stuff into new stuff for their dog. Bedspreads were turned into dog beds, trophies into dog bowls and beloved jackets into dog jackets. Everywhere parents were, we were there to offer them the love, laughter and companionship they’d been longing for in the form of a shelter dog.

Results

The Pedigree Child Replacement Programme received global media attention, featuring on prime time news and driving mass interest in dog adoption. The campaign drove an 824% lift in dog adoption enquiries through animal shelters as well as a 16% lift in Pedigree’s sales. Visits to the site far exceeded forecasted expectations, forcing us to find more shelter dogs to meet the demand. In six weeks we got more online dog adoption enquiries than in the last two years combined, helping to make The Pedigree Child Replacement Programme the most successful Adoption Drive campaign in almost a decade. In a country of just 4.5 million people, we achieved over 15m impressions during the campaign period.

Pedigree’s global mission is to make the world a better place for dogs. That requires advertising that drives action, not just ‘Likes’ and ‘Shares’. So we launched The Pedigree Child Replacement Programme – a dog adoption campaign that encouraged parents whose kids had left home to get a dog. A multi-channel campaign directed parents to our website where they could find the perfect replacement for their grown up child. Across all our work a simple call to action drove an unprecedented response, ‘When you kids move out, move on. Adopt a dog’.

‘Empty Nesters’ are considered to be anyone between the age of 45 and 75, living without children. They have the highest disposable income of any other group, so they’re often targeted by advertisers. To stand out and to ensure our work elicited a response, we spoke specifically to our target market about the delicate life stage they were currently experiencing. Not in a way that would blend in with all the other messages, but in a totally unrestrained and comedically brutal way. Our approach to increase adoptions was to build unavoidable intrigue around the campaign. This started with the name. ‘The Pedigree Child Replacement Programme’ was received with disbelief by media outlets, with its brutal honesty helping to spread the campaign through earned and paid channels. Our target market was clearly defined and our campaign’s call to action was simple, ‘When your kids move out, move on. Adopt a dog.’

Links

Website URL