Dogs Rule In Deed

I’m excited to kick off the drew blog with a post about a campaign that is a faithful example of both marketing for good and marketing as service. The campaign for Pedigree by TBWA is just doggone great in my opinion. It builds from a simple yet profound insight—“people who have dogs love their dogs.” As legendary ad great and dog owner Lee Clow put it “if you convince me you [the company] love dogs, I’ll let you feed mine.” This insight became “dogma” for Pedigree employees who were told “everything that we do is because we love dogs, because dogs rule.”

A good start indeed but it could have become a specious hairball if not for some serious soul searching at Pedigree. Employees were encouraged to bring their dogs to work and take them on sales calls (I would love to see one of these!) They even moved to dog-friendly offices when landlords unleashed anti-dog policies. The point of all this was to demonstrate their love of dogs at every turn and to walk the walk so to speak.

The marketing as service part of the program involved setting up a nonprofit organization called the Pedigree Adoption Drive Foundation. This organization supports 3,500 dog shelters across the US and encourages dog adoptions and has raised $3.5 million so far. Pedigree uses its longtime sponsorship of the Westminster Dog Show to promote pet adoption with both advertising and a pop-up store in Times Square called the Pedigree Dogstore. At the store, they orchestrated numerous dog adoptions (8 per day) working with volunteers from a local shelter.

The “dogs rule” campaign has been a howling success for Pedigree with sales growing 6% versus a relatively flat category that grew a meager 2%. This case is worth studying in detail (see Adweek article by Eleftheria Parpis) because it goes way beyond the usual advertising fluff transforming the company, its employees and its customers into brand evangelists. It even touched a jaded ad guy like Lee Clow who noted in Adweek, “the idea that a marketing strategy and a way a company goes to market can also do some good in the world is a good feeling.”