Empty Nest Syndrome is the loneliness parents feel when their children leave home. But while these parents sit in a quiet house lamenting how quickly their kids grew up, a dog sits in a shelter longing for a home. A home it can fill with love and companionship. Our idea was to connect these abandoned dogs with lonely parents.

The Pedigree Child Replacement Programme targeted ‘Empty Nesters’ with a comically blunt campaign encouraging them to adopt a dog and ‘move on’ when their kids moved out. All work directed parents to our website (replacethem.co.nz) where they could match the characteristics of their child with the characteristics of an abandoned dog– ensuring the perfect replacement was found.

To further incentivise adoption we offered parents the chance to turn their child’s old stuff into new stuff for their dog. Bedspreads were turned into dog beds, and beloved jackets into dog jackets.

‘Empty Nesters’ are considered to be anyone between the age of 45 and 75, living without children. They have the highest disposable income of any other group, so they’re often targeted by advertisers. To stand out and to ensure our work elicited a response, we spoke specifically to our target market about the delicate life stage they were currently experiencing. Not in a way that would blend in with all the other messages, but in a totally unrestrained and comedically brutal way.

Our approach to increase adoptions was to build unavoidable intrigue around the campaign. This started with the name. ‘The Pedigree Child Replacement Programme’ was received with disbelief by media outlets, with its brutal honesty helping to spread the campaign through earned and paid channels.

Our target market was clearly defined and our campaign’s call to action was simple, ‘When your kids move out, move on. Adopt a dog.’

The Pedigree Child Replacement Programme received global media attention, featuring on prime time news and driving mass interest in dog adoption. The campaign drove an 824% lift in dog adoption enquiries through animal shelters as well as a 16% lift in Pedigree’s sales.

Visits to the site far exceeded forecasted expectations, forcing us to find more shelter dogs to meet the demand. In six weeks we got more online dog adoption enquiries than in the last two years combined, helping to make The Pedigree Child Replacement Programme the most successful Adoption Drive campaign in almost a decade. In a country of just 4.5 million people, we achieved over 15m impressions during the campaign period.

Pedigree’s global mission is to make the world a better place for dogs. That requires advertising that drives action, not just ‘Likes’ and ‘Shares’. So we launched The Pedigree Child Replacement Programme – a dog adoption campaign that encouraged parents whose kids had left home to get a dog. A multi-channel campaign directed parents to our website where they could find the perfect replacement for their grown up child. Across all our work a simple call to action drove an unprecedented response, ‘When you kids move out, move on. Adopt a dog’.

‘Empty Nesters’ are considered to be anyone between the age of 45 and 75, living without children. They have the highest disposable income of any other group, so they’re often targeted by advertisers. To stand out and to ensure our work elicited a response, we spoke specifically to our target market about the delicate life stage they were currently experiencing. Not in a way that would blend in with all the other messages, but in a totally unrestrained and comedically brutal way.

Our approach to increase adoptions was to build unavoidable intrigue around the campaign. This started with the name. ‘The Pedigree Child Replacement Programme’ was received with disbelief by media outlets, with its brutal honesty helping to spread the campaign through earned and paid channels.

Our target market was clearly defined and our campaign’s call to action was simple, ‘When your kids move out, move on. Adopt a dog.’

Pedigree’s global mission is to make the world a better place for dogs, so that dogs can continue to make our lives better too.

With that in mind, Pedigree asked us to find loving homes for the growing number of abandoned dogs throughout the country. Of the 3338 dogs that went into Auckland City shelters last year, only 671 were adopted. The majority of the dogs put down were young and healthy, with many more years of love and companionship to give.

Our objective was to raise awareness of the plight of shelter dogs and, at the same time, drive New Zealanders to respond by adopting a dog.