Situation

5000 dogs a year end up in Dutch animal shelters due to a mismatch between dog and owner.

Brief

Support Pedigree's global ambition to find every dog's forever home by 2030. The brief asked for earned Branded PR Campaign. We had to come up with our own creative and there was no existing creative idea or insight to work from.

Objectives

Motivate the adoption of shelter dogs in the Netherlands.

From dog to human via AI: a digital guerrilla campaign to match shelter dogs with potential owners on dating apps. We called it 'Dogfishing'!

We transformed shelter dogs into human dating profiles using AI and highlighted their character traits and personality in the photos and profile.

For example, shelter dog Freggel was transformed into the bubbly young woman 'Froukje'. Her profile pictures were designed in a way that reflected Freggel's active personality, love for spending time outdoors and the fact that she needs socialising.

The shelter dog’s human alter egos and real life dating profiles were uploaded to the dating apps Tinder, Bumble and Hinge. When users matched with the 'human' profiles, they where informed that they had been ‘dogfished’ with the message that this a shelter dog waiting for a home and that the love is still real..

In looking for a human life partner most people take extra interest in someone's personality and interest to find out if this is the right match for them. A big contrast to choosing a dog where people base their choice mainly on looks.

By creating AI generated profile pictures that highlighted the personality and character traits of the shelter dogs we cemented our key message in our story: don't base the choice for your dog on looks alone but find out if the dog is a proper match.

To reach current and future dog owners local media was our target. With the hope it would catch on to main stream national media. Therefore the location of the animal shelter (and the presence of strong local media outlet) was key. Making sure the shelters director was prepped in our message since he/she would have the main interest of local media.

Because of a tight timeline (5 weeks) and media sensitivity around 'fake profiles' regarding dating apps we decided on a guerrilla approach. Storming the three major dating apps without warning with our 'from dogs to human' AI transformed profiles. Getting (and keeping) the profiles approved on the dating apps turned out to be more than challenging but we're happy to inform you that only one of our colleagues was banned for life from Tinder.

Media Category / Number of Publication / Reach

MarCom & Trade media / 12 / 1.038.447

Regional Dailies / 8 / 3.621.796

Regional TV / 4 / 347.420

Lifestyle Media / 4 / 1.286.400

Regional Radio / 4 / 129.000

National TV / 3 / 1.261.000

Online News Media / 3 / 999.200

National Radio / 1 / 1.324.381

Tech Media / 1 / 21.585

International Media / 1 / 179.500

Pet Media / 1 / 110.000