Traditionally, branded entertainment in Australia is limited to small online experiences as it can be very expensive to create anything branded for television. Needless to say, when it comes to the not-for-profit or charities sector, especially within the dog homelessness category, there has been no online or television branded entertainment whatsoever. Which is why the Pedigree Adoption Drive saw this as an incredible opportunity to break into a new market as well as reach a much wider audience. It also reinforces the company’s commitment to doing everything it can to reduce the rate of dog homelessness in Australia.

Every media channel was selected for a specific reason and targeted a specific audience. For example, we knew 81% of Australians used online search engines as their number 1 way of sourcing products or services. So we built an exclusive canine search engine that centralised every single shelter dog into one database. We knew Bondi Beach was Australia’s most popular. So we lined the 1.5km foreshore with dog profiles and encouraged people to adopt them. We knew over 90% of Australian phone owners downloaded apps on a regular basis. So we created Dog-A-Like, an app that finds your perfect match and lets you adopt them. And we knew Australians downloaded over half a billion YouTube clips every year. So we created ‘Underdogs’, an online branded documentary that followed the lives of five Underdogs from homelessness to their forever loving homes.

The online documentary has been seen and shared by tens of thousands of people; resulting in the same number of dog food cans donated to shelters by Pedigree. Originally created for Pedigree Adoption Drive’s YouTube and Facebook channels, the subsequent success and demand for the documentary saw it launch on national television in early 2012 to an estimated audience of more than 300,000. So what started out as a small online project with a small online audience has since exceeded our expectations. More importantly, it has help to raise the profile of the Pedigree Adoption Drive and provide a greater number of dogs with their forever loving homes.