Take a baby step into parenting
Mars Petcare
Issue 58 | March 2021
Agency
Colenso BBDO
Creative Team
Chief Creative Officer Levi Slavin Group Executive Creative Director Dan Wright Creative Director Max McKeon Copywriter Michael Swinburn Art Directors Kim Scott, Luke Dawson Designers Hamish Steptoe, Josh Hart- Vrijotte, Dean Pomfrett
Other Credits
Senior Business Director Nico Ainsworth Programme Director Arameh Bozorgi Business Manager Shem Dela Cruz Baua Digital & Data Strategist Emma Tait Executive Director, Mars Business & Innovation Ahmad Salim Client Global Brand Director PEDIGREE Fabio Alings Segment marketing manager – PET Cormac Van Den Hoofdakker
Date
November 2020
Background
PEDIGREE is on a mission to end global dog homelessness by making dogs relevant to people at different stages of their lives.
In a 2019 poll of millennials in the USA, 83% said that pet ownership should come before children with over 40% of them actively delaying parenthood in favour of life with a pet. PEDIGREE saw this as bad news for babies but a great opportunity for shelter dogs all over the world.
Idea
PEDIGREE recognised that millennial couples were starting families later than any other generation in history. They saw that there was an opportunity to offer couples a baby step into responsibility with all the advantages of children but far fewer drawbacks. Be it pressure from the in-laws, a love of freedom, or simply not being ready, parenting hesitancy was turned into the perfect excuse to adopt a dog.
The campaign targeted couples under pressure to procreate in every format made for millennials, from social film to digital radio and print. A custom-built microsite anchored the campaign, enabling the couples to match their behavioural characteristics to that of a shelter dog. Like DNA, but much better. For those whose partners needed a little more convincing, they created the PEDIGREE Powerpoint, an in-depth presentation that analysed the pros and cons of babies versus dogs.
Each element of the campaign combined in unison to give a generation of hesitant pre-parents the permission they needed to start their families – with a dog.
Results
Baby Steps launched in New Zealand in November 2020 and is to be rolled out in other markets across 2021. As yet no detailed results are available.
Our Thoughts
A couple of years ago, PEDIGREE started talking to empty-nesters with the message, ‘When your kids leave home, replace them’.
Now they’re talking to the kids who left.
The strategy is simple but brilliant, to create completely new life stages.
Don’t rush into babies, have a trial period first with a dog. It makes even more sense right now with Covid pushing birth rates to a record low (in the UK, anyway, source Daily telegraph).
It used to be that you’re born, you grow up, you get married, you have kids, then you die. PEDIGREE are saying you can have a dog with you the whole way through and your life will be all the better for it. As a dog owner myself, I’m not arguing.