Adoptables was the Grand Prix-winning campaign in 2024 for Mars Pet Nutrition brand Pedigree, garnering industry attention while also captivating dog lovers’ hearts and minds.
Anthony Dean, Marketing Director of Mars Pet Nutrition ANZ, took to the stage at AANA RESET to provide a behind-the-scenes look at how the campaign came together, how it found purpose, and the power of AI.
Pedigree set itself the mission of putting an end to dog homelessness and how to get them in front of more potential pet parents at scale.
“Today, globally, 25% of the dogs in the world do not have a home to call their own. This isn’t a new cause for Pedigree. This is the continuation of a decade-long commitment.”
“While our mission drives us, we’re also reassured, because doing good, we have proven, is good for business. That’s because we have adoption programs and shelter support systems backed by creative campaigns running across the globe.
“Not only do these campaigns connect potential pet parents with their forever dog, but they also help pet parents connect with the Pedigree brand. That’s why we lead the industry in emotive and powerful adoption-driving campaigns, often with significant investment.”
Anthony Dean: ‘Not only do these campaigns connect potential pet parents with their forever dog, but they also help pet parents connect with the Pedigree brand.’
Dean said that pet shelters are not-for-profit organisations staffed by volunteers who are passionate about rehoming dogs but do not have funds or are tech-savvy to highlight adoptable dogs.
He said that the Adoptables campaign aimed to demystify dog adoption and present the pooches in the best possible light with the help of AI.
“We spent months in research and development. We did AI models and coding options, and we had the most progressive tech studios in the world helping us augment dogs for advertising. But when you do breakthrough and pioneer, the road is never smooth.”
After building the data set of dog photos featuring different breeds with different expressions and poses, the AI model became smarter, and the hero images became more and more realistic.
Dean noted that the brand’s agency partners, BBDO Colensoin New Zealand and Essence Mediacom, stood by Pedigree during its R&D phase, noting that they highlighted the continual progress and improvement of the technology.
With the help of Nexus Studio in London, Pedigree created the perfect renderings needed for the campaign.
“After some initial success, we got excited, we were ready to start to recruit the stars of our campaign. We went back to our shelter partners, and we said don’t send us the cutest dogs, send us the dogs that have been in your homes the longest and some of these dogs have been with them for months and months and haven’t been rehomed.”
From there the brand went back to its agency partners to discuss the potential of an ad that was purpose-driven.
With the technology, Pedigree and Nexus Studio used photos of the long-serving shelter dogs to create AI-developed images of them and develop ads with its agency partners that directed potential parents to adoptable dogs near them with geographic data.
“After all that effort in R&D, it came down to a simple process. We could now take images from any shelter, put them into our AI model, lay them on pre-approved templates, dispatch and monitor.
“If you got close enough to one of these ads and took out your phone and scanned the QR code, you were guaranteed that dog was in your vicinity and available for adoption. If you went and re-homed that pet it would be immediately taken out of rotation and a new dog in that area would be replaced. It was so simple it’s now so scalable.”
Anthony Dean: ‘We believe the Adoptables formula is when you get purpose plus technology plus real-time context you can drive emotional action and change.’
Key learnings and innovation
Dean added: “In fact, 50% of the dogs we created for this campaign initially were adopted in the first two weeks. These were long-serving adoption dogs. It made us very proud, 100% of our media was purpose-led, and that’s what this campaign was about testing and learning.”
For Dean, the key learning from this campaign was “purpose powers innovation. This program for us was never about tech for tech’s sake. Pedigree’s purpose guides every decision, and when purpose leads innovation follows. For us, innovation amplified our efforts on this. It wasn’t the other way around.
“But what about Adoptables? What was the code that we cracked? We believe the Adoptables formula is when you get purpose plus technology plus real-time context you can drive emotional action and change.
“Adoptables is a system for us now that scales well and we’re proud of it.”
The express turn around for the Adoptables campaign
Dean revealed that while the first discussions of the Adoptables to the final product took six months, the development was 16 weeks.
“We put a lot of pressure on ourselves and got a lot of support.”
While there were many technical challenges, Dean said that they had “broken so many firsts with this campaign for a decade.”
“When you’ve got great partners, no, I didn’t want to give up because I knew somehow, we’d find a way.”
What’s next for Pedigree and the Adoptables campaign
Looking ahead, Pedigree is expanding the Adoptables campaign to North America which Dean noted is “the biggest pet care market in the world.”
“They have over 90 million dogs and many of them are looking for their forever home and that can’t make us any prouder.”
He also noted that Mars is investing heavily in the tech for the North American expansion. “The amount the tech’s building up now, they will do a considerable amount of A&P behind that campaign so then everything has to hold up together,” he added.