CATEOGORY: Promotional Web Site
FIRST PLACE CAMPAIGN: Crazy Pet Owners
CLIENT: Pedigree
AGENCY: Catapult
Pedigree suggests that 4 million people adopt dogs
An elderly woman sitting in her dining room shows photos of her pet ostrich to a visitor and says, “Look how cute he is. Isn’t he cute?” The ostrich itself is outside chasing the mailman. A parent sitting in the front seat of an SUV turns to the kids in the back seat and says, “Is everything okay back there?” The kids are squished up against the family pet — a wild boar — and they look not only uncomfortable but also terrified. Meanwhile, a young man tries to get his “pet” — a bull — to catch a frisbee and gets nothing but blank stares after hitting the bull in the forehead with the round disk. These funny, irreverent ads featuring exotic and unmanageable crazy pets are three of the commercials created by TBWA\Chiat\Day for Pedigree’s “Crazy Pet Owners” campaign. All of them ended with one simple point: “Maybe you should get a dog.”
Pedigree wanted to generate awareness of the fact that more than 4 million dogs enter shelters every year. The commercials ran during the weeks leading up to, including and following the Super Bowl, and Pedigree charged Catapult with extending the TV campaign online and reaching even more people.
Catapult leveraged the creative online through a microsite called dogsrule.com to engage consumers in an interactive experience that created brand awareness and also cemented Pedigree’s position as a caring organization. At the same, it enlisted participants to adopt dogs and contribute to the feeding of homeless dogs. The messaging noted that for every video watched, a donation would be made to the Pedigree Foundation and a bowl of food would be donated to a shelter dog.
The program included a Web site, iPhone app, behind-the-scenes content, disruptive takeover ad on the brand’s Web site and other online and offline elements. The digital media strategy gave Super Bowl viewers a place to go after the game to see the funny spots. Catapult created a presence on a number of different media properties, including YouTube, and they all drove the viewer back to the main web site.
“Help us help dogs,” the home page takeover said, as a rhino stormed across the page, shattering glass in its path, while pulling a doghouse on a chain behind it. When the page stopped shaking, viewers could click on information about the Pedigree adoption drive, see the number of meals donated, download an app that made their iPhone bark, read about keeping their dog healthy and more.
“One of the most important things to recognize is that consumers don’t always want to go to the brand site, they want to go where the content is,” Jason Roberts, Catapult’s vice president of account services, interactive, said. “So we made sure we were on the Yahoo channel and YouTube. That’s where 85% of the videos were seen, so that was critical. And then all links drove them back to dogsrule.com.”
Catapult reports that the campaign drove the highest sales increase ever for the brand, generating total sales of $22.2 million through audited sales channels. During the campaign, Pedigree.com generated a 115.5% lift in total page views and a 225.2% lift in visitors with a 223.4% lift in unique visitors. Post Super Bowl, the positive momentum kept going with a 146.2% lift in total page views, 238.7% lift in visitors, 242.3% lift in unique visitors and 19.4% lift in time spent per visit.
“At the end of the day, the simplest ideas are the best ideas,” Roberts said. “Whether you were on Yahoo or YouTube or dogsrule.com, you could watch a video and impact a shelter dog.”
And what an impact it made. Total video views were 2,243,847, which equated to the same number of bowls of food donated to dog shelters nationwide. —Lynn Russo Whylly
Network
