As a long standing, but little known, supporter of New Zealand animal adoption charity SPCA, MINI wanted to help drive interest in SPCA dog adoptions.

Our target: the hundreds of thousands of potential dog owners in NZ.

Our strategy was to address the key barrier to adoptions: the perception that shelter dogs are inferior to store bought animals. People think that if a dog's in a shelter, it must be damaged goods.

To do that, we wanted to show how smart these dogs really are.

People need to trust a dog with their family, so it was crucial we proved shelter dogs are able to be trained (and trained well) in the most compelling, convincing way possible. Only such an audacious idea could reassure people that adoption wasn’t a risk.

The campaign was a genuine world first. We had to devise an 8 week “dog driving” training course; modify a car so a dog could drive it; and then film them behind the wheel actually driving.

By making heroes of the dogs we also subverted conventional adoption advertising which often paints the dogs as victims.

We taught three SPCA dogs to do something a dog had never done before. Drive a car.

We used this idea to engage potential dog owners directly through social media; allowing people to learn about the training, engage with the dogs and connect with shelter dog advocates. From here, they were directed to the SPCA adoption website where they could adopt their own smart dog.

Video content of the dogs driving was seeded with bloggers and news networks and quickly went viral. Each video finished with an adoption call to action, ensuring the perception change was immediately converted to action.

People need to trust a dog with their family, so it was crucial we proved shelter dogs are able to be trained (and trained well) in the most compelling, convincing way possible. Only such an audacious idea could reassure people that adoption wasn’t a risk.

The campaign was a genuine world first. We had to devise an 8 week “dog driving” training course; modify a car so a dog could drive it; and then film them behind the wheel actually driving.

By making heroes of the dogs we also subverted conventional adoption advertising which often paints the dogs as victims.