2008: Pedigree, Marketing Communications - Case Study

A thoughtful and heart-warming campaign put Pedigree at the forefront of helping homeless dogs.

Key insights

• • Love of dogs is at the heart of the Pedigree brand so it had to be integral to its marketing strategy.
• • The resulting corporate social responsibility (CSR)campaign which focused on helping homeless dogs was a perfect fit for the brand’s promise.
• • Not only did it help dogs find homes, but it brought consumer attention to the problem and had huge impact on brand perception.

Summary

Pedigree is part of global food manufacturer Mars. In the UK, it wanted to demonstrate that love of dogs is at the heart of the brand by backing up its beliefs with action. In January 2008 it launched a major CSR initiative as a key part of its marketing, ‘The Pedigree Adoption Drive‘, to help charities re-home over 100,000 dogs found abandoned each year in the UK.

The campaign encouraged responsible dog ownership and also raised awareness of dogs in need of a loving home. Furthermore, a donation for every Pedigree product sold during the campaign went to rescue charities to help them continue their great work.

The multi-channel campaign included a six-part TV series with ITV. Dog lovers responded enthusiastically, with almost £500,000 raised for homeless dogs. The brand benefited as well: sales increased, while there was a eight-point increase in those who believed that Pedigree had the well-being of dogs at its heart.

Bringing the heart of the brand to life

Pedigree has always believed that dogs make our lives better. In 2005 it made that belief tangible by launching a manifesto campaign to convey its core promise — that everything it does is for love of dogs, and that every dog deserves to be fed well and have a loving home.

If dog love was the core of the brand, than caring for dogs had to be at the core of the marketing activity. CSR would not simply be an add-on but would complete the brand promise to consumers, the wider public and staff.

In 2008 Pedigree launched The Pedigree Adoption Drive to support the charities that care for dogs. The company decided to create a fund to offer financial assistance to shelters. 1p from every Pedigree product sold over a three-month period would be put into a dedicated fund for charities and shelters with projects that helped abandoned dogs.

Applications to the fund were to be considered by the trustees of The Kennel Club Charitable Trust, along with a representative from Pedigree, Suzy Roffey and Clarissa Baldwin, the chairman of the Association of Dogs & Cats Homes. This board would operate as an impartial expert body familiar with the needs and requirements of rescue centres.

By working with The Kennel Club the company ensured that 100% of the funds donated reached charities, as the Trust’s administration costs were funded by The Kennel Club. Each grant would also be followed up by a case study to guarantee that 100% of the funds helped homeless dogs directly.

The campaign also aimed to inspire Pedigree consumers, retailers and the wider dog-loving public to help this worthy cause by raising awareness of the situation of homeless dogs in this country and then giving people a variety of ways to help. This could range from simply buying Pedigree products through to visiting a rescue centre to checking their suitability for adopting a dog.

What’s at stake

The scale of the problem is daunting. Every year more than 100,000 dogs are found stray or abandoned in the UK which puts immense strain on rescue centres. These charities receive no government funding, relying entirely on charitable donations to keep doing their
vital work and depending on volunteers giving their time.

It costs a huge amount of money every year to provide and maintain the level of veterinary care, food and shelter these dogs need. For example, it costs more than £10 million every year to run Battersea Dogs and Cats Home, one of the largest shelters in the UK. In 2007 Battersea cared for 9,262 dogs and 3,069 cats. And Battersea is just one among many shelters in the UK.

Calling all dog lovers

The campaign had two core aims:

1. Educate:

• Make people aware of the situation of homeless dogs in the UK and show them how essential the work of dog re-homing centres is.

2. Inspire:

• Pedigree consumers, staff and the greater dog-loving British public to help homeless dogs by showing them how easy it is to make a difference, from buying Pedigree, and/or volunteering at a centre, to going all the way and adopting a dog.

The resulting campaign was integrated across a number of channels.

Digital

To achieve its aims Pedigree focused on the key audience: dog lovers. The website would be crucial to the campaign because it would be the primary source of in-depth information about the Pedigree Adoption Drive and would also include information about responsible dog ownership and how and where to adopt dogs. The website would also feature the stories of the homeless dogs featured in the advertising.

People could sign up to receive regular updates about the adoption drive and further information about adopting dogs. There was also an area for charities to apply for grants. Traffic was driven to the site through advertising and public relations (PR), sending out targeted emails and sponsoring takeovers of the Yahoo home page. The results exceeded expectations:

• In the first quarter of 2008 the website had 150,000 visits and 760,000 page views.
• 62% of these visits were direct, not from searching: i.e. consumers typing in www.pedigreeadoptiondrive.com.
• People viewed on average 5.07 pages per visit and spent an average two minutes 42 seconds on the site.
• In the first week of the campaign the Pedigree Adoption Drive site was channelling more than 50% of the traffic of all Pedigree sites combined.

Above-the-line advertising

The company decided to use only real homeless dogs and their stories to tell the adoption drive story. Each of the 12 dogs featured in the campaign was a homeless dog from Battersea (Figure 1) and every one of them was then adopted. Being able to tell real stories about real dogs added honesty, credibility and strength to the campaign, which was created with TBWA London with the TV produced by Juice Creative.

Isaac (Figure 2) was the hero of the TV work. After being adopted he began training as a mountain rescue dog, which was a great example of the potential every homeless dog has. The national TV campaign featuring Isaac and other dogs was voiced by the actor Neil Morrissey, chosen as spokesman because he had a shelter dog, Tiggy.

Advertising-funded programming

One of the central aims of the Pedigree Adoption Drive was to increase awareness of the great work done by charities ‘behind the scenes’ helping abandoned dogs. Through the media agency Mediacom, Pedigree contacted ITV with an idea for a TV show showing the work of the people who saved abandoned dogs and the charities that homed them. Mediacom and ITV went on to develop Dog Rescue, a series with six-30 minute shows, with branded sponsorship bumpers created by TBWA.

The show was seen by 9.6 million individuals across the series. On average, 15% more viewers joined the show whenever it was aired, gathering real momentum. Those who had seen the show identified more strongly with Pedigree (10% more identification with the brand) and felt the brand was meaningfully differentiated (+11% ‘the brand fits with my pet’s needs’).

PR coverage

The company received a staggering amount of PR coverage for the adoption drive campaign. Managed by Jackie Cooper PR, the main event of the campaign was the ‘big walk’ through Battersea. The spokesman Neil Morrisey and his adopted dog Tiggy joined hundreds of local residents, Battersea volunteers and Pedigree staff for a walk through Battersea park to raise the profile of the campaign.

Neil and Tiggy featured on BBC News 24 and also appeared on Loose Women and This Morning talking about the Pedigree Adoption Drive. The story ran in the Daily Mail among other leading publications and also appeared on many blog sites. For example, there were:

• 218 pieces of branded coverage.
• Campaign MBR: 7.49 million.
• Campaign reach: 180 million branded media impressions.
• Campaign cost per impact: 0.04 p.
• Campaign return on investment : 25:1.

On-pack and in-store

In-store support for the campaign was crucial, given that donations were generated from every Pedigree pack purchased. There was information about the adoption drive on the pack along with branded food donation points at point-of-sale (POS).

Donated food was given to rescue centres local to the store. These arrangements were made between the individual supermarket managers and their local charities. Pedigree supplied them with the POS materials and received excellent feedback from the charities who were delighted to create relationships with the local retailers.

There was wholehearted support from the major supermarkets, including Morrison’s and Asda. Specialist pet food retailers got fully behind the campaign as well: staff at some stores even wore branded shirts during the campaign. This level of staff engagement among retailers was a valuable asset.

A good result for dogs

The campaign had a huge impact on the fortunes of homeless dogs, not only by raising money for the charities that look after them, but by helping to increase awareness of the problem through the campaign messages. It reached millions of people around the UK. The results speak for themselves:

• £489,000 donated to help homeless dogs.
• The company received over 160 requests for grants from charities around the country, over 150 of which were granted. Many of these were small organisations, so the grants were of huge value to them.
• An estimated 43 million people encountered the campaign.

Sales uplift

The campaign contributed strongly to a year-on-year value sales increase of 6% over 2007-8, with a clear increase in incremental sales over the period of the campaign compared to 2007 (Figure 3).

Boosting the brand attributes

The campaign also had a very positive impact on perceptions of the brand. The IPSOS/MORI Brand Equity Tracker showed phenomenal results when comparing the fourth quarter of 2007 with the first quarter of 2008. Each of the following scores shifted significantly in measurement:

• Motivation increased from 50 to 61. ‘This brand fits with my needs and my pet’s needs, it is relevant to me’.
• Trust 74 to 80. ‘I have confidence in this brand and I trust it’.
• Identification 54 to 63. ‘I have something in common with this brand. If this brand were a person I would like them’.
• Quality 67 to 74. ‘This is a brand that stands for quality’.
• Dog well-being 58-66. ‘This brand has dog well-being in its heart’.

This was the ideal CSR campaign for Pedigree. It enhanced the brand, grew the business and helped vulnerable dogs. The company continued the campaign in 2009, this time donating 2p from the profits of every product.

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