Background

500 million dogs worldwide are homeless. It’s Pedigree’s mission to put an end to this harrowing statistic by 2030. They’ve driven pet adoption through marketing, but inherent challenges of the traditional adoption model limits their success. Through research with a panel of shelters, we identified that the shelter industry is broken. A lack of centralised administration meant crucial time was lost. Filtering potential adopters was time-consuming, leading to poorer quality adoptions and 1 in 5 dogs bouncing back to shelters. Compassion fatigue was a major problem for shelters globally, leading to 1 in 6 workers contemplating suicide - the highest rate of suicide in any American workforce, alongside Police and Firefighters. We needed to rethink pet adoption so Pedigree could live up to their mission, and reduce compassion fatigue. So we launched a new brand - MyHooman, the first end-to-end adoption system, with empathy for shelter workers at its heart.

Describe the creative idea

Compassion fatigue leads to 1 in 6 shelter workers contemplating suicide. They have the highest suicide rate of American workers, alongside Police and Firefighters. MyHooman is a pet adoption platform, designed with shelters, to combat compassion fatigue and ensure better quality adoptions for animals. Every aspect of the platform is designed for efficiency and empathy. Friendly uplifting UI, technology that helps streamline shelter administration, an algorithm that efficiently filters and matches potential adopters, and data & personalisation used to boost shelter workers on the tough days, are just some of the features that help MyHooman live up to that promise.

Describe the strategy

The WALTHAM Institute provides us with generic dog breed information, then, every time a dog is uploaded to the platform we gather their unique data, creating their profile which is editable by shelter staff. Finally, we capture adopters’ data through a series of onboarding questions and answers. We used an empathetic human-centred-design process, forming a shelter co-creation panel, supported by global insights supplied by Mars and trusted secondary sources. Through months of research and analysis, we were able to form a complete end-to-end understanding of the dog adoption process from shelter and adopter perspectives. The solution required bringing a dog’s needs to the forefront of adoption. So, we created the most powerful one-destination shelter management system in the world - MyHooman, a platform that instead of helping humans shop for dogs, helps dogs find the right human. The platform calls for adopters to find a match that’s right for them.

Describe the execution

To revolutionise the shelter adoption process, MyHooman puts fun and compassion at the heart of a data-driven digital experience, and the platform’s ease of use, empathetic design, and streamlined adoption process helps combat compassion-fatigue among shelter workers. Shelter managers can further give dogs the best chance for adoption by instantly sharing their profiles across social media. Our human-centred-design process meant we took a bespoke technical process, transforming it into a friendly, easy-to-use digital platform. Regardless of how good our system was at finding dogs their forever homes, not every story ended happily. But, for shelters, being reminded of their successes really helps. Once again, we used that data – this time in the form of heart-warming reminders of their past adoptions; a tally of total adoptions; and daily personalised welcomes like “Stay passionate, Sandra!” and “Sandra, you’ve got snoots to boop!”. On tough days, just one smile keeps them going.

List the results

MyHooman has been tested in New Zealand, and soon rolls out globally. Since launch, an incredible 65% of the entire independent NZ dog shelter industry has signed up to MyHooman – exceeding Pedigree’s ambition of 50% by a massive 30%. This number is even more outstanding when considering that to achieve this, MyHooman had to overcome 0% brand awareness, 0% product awareness. MyHooman has smashed it’s onboarding target by 448.7% in just 9 quick months. Feedback from our shelters in regards to compassion fatigue have been overwhelmingly positive. Tracey from Rottweiler Rescue says: “Really like the memories - when you see success things come through, it gets you through the days when you want to throw the towel in.” In regards to adoptions, 37% of visitors to the site matched with potential dogs, 1 in 8 started an adoption application, with 41% of dogs uploaded to the platform being adopted.