At its core, Pedigree caters to giving dogs their best life, with the proper care, nourishment, and love every pup needs and deserves. You may typically see the brand on pet and grocery store shelves, but Pedigree is also greatly committed to shelter dog adoption.

To stay true to our brand mission we needed to look for new ways to get people excited about the adoption process. Thinking far from ordinary, and with an opportunity to use a new and emerging app, Pedigree figured that a digital campaign seemed to be the best opportunity.

This approach made it easy for people to join in on the adoption process. And, partnering moderators of rooms ensured our dogs would be heard, and the campaign message acknowledged.

What better way to scope out potential owners than through an interface where audiences are live, engaged, and relevant in the discussion of their attending.

Launched in April 2020, the emerging Clubhouse app has the world’s attention. Given its young age, we haven’t seen what its engagement can offer to a brand’s marketing initiatives and ideas, until now.

We wanted to prove that dogs are some of the best listeners with our own Clubhouse hack. Given this opportunity, just creating a Clubhouse brand account wasn’t enough - although easier. We wanted to be bigger than that and give these shelter dogs a real “voice” by creating actual accounts for them.

After creating accounts for shelter dogs from around the country, we began popping into different

clubhouse rooms that focused on topics we know dogs directly help with. Like mental health, emotional support, and fitness. After joining rooms for four straight days, we hosted the first ever live adoption event on Clubhouse with a final Q&A between shelter partners and real-time listeners.

Clubhouse participants join chat rooms voluntarily, so it can be assumed each listener finds the topic and conversation relevant, and is both engaged and interested in the discussion. That said, browsing select chat rooms and discussions enabled us to scope the specific traits, lifestyles, and needs of attendees.

Consider Pedigree playing the role of Cupid for a moment, by intentionally having our dogs pop into rooms that we know dogs directly help with they could have an easier time finding forever homes. That’s why we joined fitness, mental health, and emotional support chat rooms, so participants would find these new prospective family members to meet their needs, and in turn, give these pups their best chance of finding a home.

Since the goal of this campaign was to get our shelter dogs adopted, it was important to target certain room topics that we know dogs directly help with.

Pedigree evened the playing field for all participants on Clubhouse by giving shelter dogs a “voice.” We set up unique Clubhouse profiles for select shelter dogs from around the country, of which included their personality traits, the shelter they’re currently situated, and a link to adopt. Over four consecutive days, the dogs popped into live chat rooms where moderators acknowledged and called attention to their presence and also encouraged adoption.

It didn’t stop there, though. At the end of the week, Pedigree held its own chat room, the Pedigree DogHouse, a live Q&A session and forum to discuss the importance of dog adoption, while linking shelter partners with a real-time audience.

We acted fast bringing this entire campaign to life in just two weeks with only a $4k budget.

In just four days we reached over 1 million ears across numerous chat rooms, gained 440 followers on our personal Clubhouse account, and reached over 2,000 participants with our Pedigree DogHouse event. Overall, we generated 10.3 million PR impressions and 90,000 social media impressions with zero media budget.

Most important though, we got over 50 inquiries and found fur-ever homes for 30% of our feature dogs by becoming the first brand ever to execute a totally new and innovative campaign on Clubhouse.