200 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 at the core of the traditional adoption model have limited their success.

We needed to rethink adoption.

So we looked to the core of the problem; people shop for the dog they want - based on superficial reasons like appearance, breed, and ‘cuteness’ - not the dog that’s right for their lifestyle. As a result, up to one in five dogs are returned to shelters, resulting in long-lasting detrimental effects.

We needed to flip the way traditional animal adoption works, stopping humans shopping for animals like accessories, and instead helping dogs find the human that’s right for their needs.

200 million dogs worldwide are homeless. It’s Pedigree’s mission to put an end to this by 2030. We’ve always driven pet adoption through marketing, but inherent challenges at the core of the traditional adoption model meant we needed to rethink pet adoption to make real systemic change.

We worked hand-in-hand with a shelter co-creation panel to truly understand their day-to-day problems, pain points and processes.

From the outside, working with dogs seemed like a dream, turns out shelter work isn’t what we imagined.

Seeing dogs and people at their worst every day is hard. This emotional toll results in compassion fatigue, leading to burn out – much like nurses.

Introducing MyHooman, the first end-to-end pet adoption system, designed with empathy for shelter workers at its heart. A solution that addresses their pain points from the very first interaction, focusing on combating compassion fatigue and helping the helpers.

We used an empathetic human-centred design process, forming an adoptor co-creation panel, supported by global insights. By developing an end-to-end understanding of the dog adoption process we identified the two audiences and their associated ‘pains and gains’.We then worked with The Waltham Petcare Science Institute and a co-creation panel of shelter workers to define what a dog needs to have a happy home. Dogs, like us, are individuals with different experiences that shape their personalities, behaviour, and needs. We asked adopters to ‘find their match’ – presenting them dogs that suited their lifestyle, personalising the match message to enhance the connection between the adopter and their best match. This data was further used to personalise the platform experience with dynamic content, showcasing why a match is, or isn’t, right for you. If there isn’t a match that’s quite right; MyHooman retargets the adopter off-platform once a better match becomes available.

MyHooman removes subjectivity, using data to match dogs to the right adopters for them.

When someone first visits MyHooman, they are greeted with a series of questions about their lifestyle and then, a little like Tinder UI, users then flick through the cards of dogs’ profiles, choosing from those dogs who had already swiped right on them.

SURE... BUT HOW DID THE DOG SWIPE RIGHT? With difficulty.

We worked with The Waltham Petcare Science Institute and a co-creation panel of shelter workers and owners to define what a dog needs to have a happy home. Dogs, like us, are individuals with different experiences that shape their personalities, behaviour and needs. We ensured shelter workers were able to input and adjust multiple data points on each dog throughout their stay.

Cross-tabulating across the human and dog datasets, our intelligent algorithm dynamically scans 60 unique data points, makes 2,442 calculations, and filters through a whopping 157.3 quintillion possible combinations. In-real time, serving people matches within seconds.

Matches are given a compatibility score out of 94% ( 6% for the shelter's best judgment) - matching runners with energetic dogs and snuggly dogs with avid readers, with the dog's profile showing why a match is or isn’t, ‘right’.

Then we take the power of MyHooman off-platform, feeding dog profiles into programmatic media placements, targeted against a matrix of audiences. People are served real shelter dogs who they would be perfect for, regardless of how far down the funnel they are - leveraging third-party data signals for acquisition and first-party data for retargeting.

For hoomans it's a simple, personalised, one-stop adoption hub. For dogs, its smart match algorithm means they’re matched with the right hooman, the first time - so they’re less likely to be returned to a shelter. Win-win.

An incredible 66% of the entire independent New Zealand dog shelter industry has signed up to MyHooman – exceeding Pedigree’s ambition by 132%. Even more outstanding when considering that MyHooman had to overcome 0% brand and product awareness with $0 media spend.

In terms of ending pet homelessness - New Zealand represents >1% of the global MARS market. Assuming the impact is the same as 2020, MyHooman would contribute to 33% of all MARS’ global efforts.

Better yet, we’ve dropped the shelter dog return rate from 16% to 1%, and we’re collecting customer data for 20% less money – proving that not only is it the right thing to do for the dogs, but it’s the right thing to do for business.