The Australian Effie Awards
2015 Effie Entry Form Government or
Not For Profit & Cause Related Marketing
Entry Number:
Agency
Advertiser
Entry Title
GPY&R Melbourne
Lost Dogs Home
Human Walking Program
Category for this Entry
Author
Phone
Email
Small Budget
Michael Hyde & Daniel Liberale
0411 324 154
[email protected]
Directions appearing with each question must not to be deleted from the completed case; they serve as a guide for both
entrants and judges. Complete entry form in - Type face: black font; 10pt minimum. All data must include a specific,
verifiable source. Refer to the Effie “How to Enter” booklet for guidelines on properly sourcing your data. Data without a
source will result in entry disqualification. Answer every question or indicate “not applicable” and define your target
audience in the entry. Any unanswered question will result in entry disqualification.
Executive Summary (Please Attach the Executive Summary to the front of the entry so the
judges can read this first)
This is the story of how what started as a small dog adoption campaign for a
single animal shelter in Melbourne’s inner north turned the way people engaged
with shelter animals on its head; delivered incremental dog adoptions after the
campaign, went global, inspired events around the world from Utah to the
Netherlands and lead to countless of dogs finding loving homes.
1. Total Campaign Expenditure
What was your total expenditure including development, media, production, agency fees and any other
costs? Including production and value of donated media and non-traditional paid media.
Removed
Donated paid media: ~$230,000 ($115,000 per event) estimated by public relations company PPR.
155
The Australian Effie Awards
2015 Effie Entry Form Government or
Not For Profit & Cause Related Marketing
2. What was the strategic communications challenge?
What was going on in your category? Provide information on the category, marketplace, organisation,
environment, target audience and the circumstances that created your challenge and your response to it.
The Lost Dogs Home is an animal shelter in the inner city suburb of North Melbourne. And while
they look after and try to find homes for cats too this is the story of a Dog Adoption campaign.
The Lost Dogs Home does not operate in a competitive environment. Its mission is pure and
simple. To care for animals and wherever possible connect them with people who will love them.
Like all shelters The Lost Dogs Home is staffed by mix of paid and volunteer staff, all of whom are
absolute animal lovers who do the very best they can to find homes for lost or abandoned
animals.
The problem is that an inner city shelter only has so much physical space.
With 250,000 dogs tragically abandoned in Australia every year - it doesn’t take long for that
space to fill up. (The Conversation, 2015)1
This leads to a perception in the public that Animal Shelters are cramped, over crowded, and in
poor condition.
With limited space and equally limited funds The Lost Dogs Home has an inability to hold dogs
indefinitely.
Unfortunately that means… euthanasia
Animal lobby and welfare groups are quick to jump on Animal Shelters (and not just The Lost
Dogs Home) for their euthanasia rates. But sadly there is little the shelter can do. If a dog is not
adopted, it well, is not adopted. No one is happy about that.
1
The Conversation (2015) War of words: how cute puppies become 250,000 abandoned dogs.
From https://theconversation.com/war-of-words-how-cute-puppies-become-250-000-abandoned-dogs-38420
The Australian Effie Awards
2015 Effie Entry Form Government or
Not For Profit & Cause Related Marketing
This leads to a perception that Animal Shelters are cruel, morbid, and depressing places.
The kind of place you don’t want to go to.
Furthermore there is a perception that the types of dogs in shelters are sick, untrained,
aggressive, a bit busted. Broken dogs that no one wants. Not the kind of dog you could safely call
‘your best mate’.
This creates a terrible feedback loop of negativity.
Essentially lost and abandoned dogs, and shelters are an out-of-sight, out-of-mind problem.
Something dog lovers know about, but choose to ignore.
As dog (and cat) lovers we had to find a way to break this negative cycle, and bring these
beautiful pooches to loving homes.
3. What were your objectives? State specific goals.
Your entry is expected to include compelling data including behavioural objectives and results. Only in rare
instances are the judges likely to award an entry that only demonstrates attitudinal changes. Provide a % or # for
all goals. If you do not have a specific type of objective (e.g. no quantifiable objectives), state this in the entry
form and explain why and why the objectives you do have are significant and challenging in the context of your
category, etc. You must provide benchmark and context for your goals versus year prior and in context of
competitive landscape and category.
Removed.
We had one simple hard/business objective:
OBJECTIVE ONE: Find more homes for shelter dogs. XXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXX
With the hard/business objective set we worked with The Lost Dogs Home to ladder out a set of
sequential behavioural, attitudinal, and communications objectives that would contribute to
success.
The Australian Effie Awards
2015 Effie Entry Form Government or
Not For Profit & Cause Related Marketing
What behaviour would be required before people would go to the shelter to adopt a dog?
OBJECTIVE TWO: Get people to visit the adoption pages of The Lost Dogs Home website.
What would trigger this behaviour change? How would we get people to want learn about the
dogs we had for adoption?
OBJECTIVE THREE: Get people to believe that a shelter dog could be a meaningful part of their
life.
What would the role of communications be in bringing about this trigger?
OBJECTIVE FOUR: Reframe the perception of what a shelter dog is like.
Yes, only Objective One had a meaningful and quantifiable target set. That really was the sole
objective, but we knew that by establishing our soft objectives and working through them we
would be able to guide our focus and efforts.
4. What was your strategy – and how did you get there?
What was your strategy? Was it driven by a consumer insight or channel insight or marketplace / brand opportunity?
Explain how it originated and how the strategy addressed the challenge.
We spoke to the owners of shelter dogs, and the owners of ‘non-shelter dogs’.
We asked each group to do a projective exercise using images and words to describe their perceptions
or experiences of a shelter dog.
We learnt that the truth was a shelter dog is a loving companion, loyal, affectionate, and wonderful. A
friend. A family member. And for some, a saviour.
But the perception among owners of ‘non-shelter dogs’ toward shelter dogs was negative, gloomy,
troublesome, sick, problematic.
Our hunch that shelter dogs had an image problem was confirmed.
We visited The Lost Dogs Home.
We witnessed first hand that the shelter is not a confined, cramped, gloomy space. But even among us
there was a sense of trepidation in making the visit. As animal lovers we didn’t want to see animals
with uncertain futures.
When we got there we realised that our product, the dogs, were our number one asset.
In order to overcome the psychological barrier of the shelter we knew we needed to get our product to
the people.
We thought about “Which people?”
We thought about long and hard about this. Families are the first group that comes to mind when you
think about dog ownership. And to be honest that’s who we thought we’d go after. But then late one
night as we were working away we realised that it was actually us; inner city office workers, working
late (again), in our cubicles who really needed the rescuing.
The Australian Effie Awards
2015 Effie Entry Form Government or
Not For Profit & Cause Related Marketing
We looked at the way the category presents itself.
Until now, most advertising for pet adoption (including ours) featured sad looking dogs in an attempt to
guilt people into getting their pet from the local rescue home. But this tends to create negative feelings
and perceptions that the dogs were too broken, old, sick or untrainable to be a suitable pet.
Our strategy was to flip the rules of the category on their head.



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It’s not the dogs that need rescuing – it’s us in our cubicle farms.
It’s not the dogs that are sad and cramped – it’s us in our un-ergonomic chairs.
It’s not about making a trip to the shelter – it’s about bringing the shelter to the CBD.
It’s not about feeling sorry for a shelter dog – it’s about experiencing the face lick of a happy dog
5. What was your big idea?
What was the idea that drove your effort?
The idea should not be your execution or tagline. State in 25 WORDS OR LESS.
Our idea was born. Create an moment of joy to reframe the way people see shelter dogs and remind
them just how awesome having a dog is!
An event where the dogs did the rescuing – the Human Walking Program
The Australian Effie Awards
2015 Effie Entry Form Government or
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6. How did you bring the idea to life?
Describe and provide rationale for your communications strategy that brings the idea to life. Explain how your idea
addresses your challenge. Describe the channels selected/why selected? How did your creative and media strategies
work together?
In not more than three A4 pages show sufficient creative examples to enable the judges to understand the campaign.
These pages can be additional to the eight A4 page written entry.
The Human Walking is an event or activation where The Lost Dogs Home brought their dogs to CBD
parks and let them take anxious office workers for a lunchtime walk.
By appealing to office workers directly we put them in the position of those who needed rescuing.
Office workers saw the positive benefits of dog ownership in the most direct way imaginable - engaging
with the dogs themselves. The event was supported by EDMs to large corporate firms, fliers were
handed out at major CBD train stations, DM packs to local cafes, press, outdoor, radio and editorial.
And of course there was the event itself – one giant, living, barking, interactive outdoor event.
The Australian Effie Awards
2015 Effie Entry Form Government or
Not For Profit & Cause Related Marketing
Our PR partners (PPR) pulled some strings in reaching out to media outlets. They too fell in love with
the idea and jumped in with free media to plug the Human Walking Program. We were picked up on
Light FM, 3AW, Nova, Magic 1278, ABC774, Joy FM and Gold 104.
The first event itself was held in Flagstaff Gardens in the first week of April 2014 giving hundreds of
lonely office workers a reprieve from their busy day to be walked around the park by one of our selfless
dogs. Hosted by Channel 10 weatherman and dog lover Mike Larkin, the event was covered by all three
major TV outlets on the evening news, giving all Melbournians a new perspective on shelter dogs.
The second Human Walking program was held at the end of November 2014 in Treasury Gardens,
equally well supported by local media, it also saw the return of many of the dogs adopted during the
first event. People brought their “Adopted and Adored” dogs along to introduce them to the crowd, to
show everyone how far they’d come and the bond between dog and owner. Owners were able to talk
about the positive impact their Lost Dogs Home dog had had on their lives, and in turn they on the lives
of the dogs.
The Australian Effie Awards
2015 Effie Entry Form Government or
Not For Profit & Cause Related Marketing
7. How do you know your campaign was successful?
Detail why you consider your effort a success. Refer to your objectives (results must relate directly to your objectives in
(3) – restate them and provide results) and demonstrate how you met or exceeded those objectives using quantitative and
behavioural metrics. Did your effort drive in-market results? Did it drive awareness and consumer behaviour change? Use
charts and data whenever possible. Explain what x% means in your category. For confidential information proof of
performance may be indexed if desired. Demonstrate the correlation between activity and outcomes.
Make sure you address every objective, whether fully achieved or not. Indicate why the results you have are significant in
the context of your category, competition and product / service.
OBJECTIVE ONE: Find more homes for shelter dogs. (Removed)
RESULT:
 We exceeded the two-year average weekly adoption rate (excluding the weeks following our
events) for each of the four weeks after our events.
(Removed)
OBJECTIVE TWO: Get people to visit the adoption pages of The Lost Dogs Home website.
We used traffic to the Adoption Dogs section of The Lost Dogs Home website as a lead indicator of
adoption behaviour. Why? Because all available dogs are displayed – with a profile – on the website and
most people come into the shelter with a specific dog in mind that they want to adopt. They may fall in
love with another when they come to us, but playing around on our site and spending time in the
adoption section (which, by the way is around 4 and a half minutes and didn’t notably change) we feel is
generally the behaviour people exhibit before coming into The Lost Dogs Home.
RESULT:
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
In the month after Event One we saw a lift in Page Views of 11%
In the month after Event Two we saw a lift in Page Views of 18%
The Australian Effie Awards
2015 Effie Entry Form Government or
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Our final two objectives were our soft measures:
OBJECTIVE THREE: Get people to believe that a shelter dog could be a meaningful part of their life.
OBJECTIVE FOUR: Reframe the perception of what a shelter dog is like.
These objectives did not have quantifiable metrics against them, not did we conduct any research post
the events. That in hind-sight is a failing on our part, but what happened next gives us every confidence
that we were reframing perceptions and we were getting people to believe that a shelter dog could be a
meaningful part of their life.
Why do we believe that? Because the idea went global.
The Human Walking Program achieved something we never expected.
After being shared on the media sharing website Upworthy and collecting 480,000 video views in the first
week, The Human Walking Program was picked up around the world, and broadcast to millions of
viewers and readers.
The Human Walking Program was featured in The Huffington Post (42,000 shares) and was broadcast on
Al Jazeera’s global news channel.
It was only then we realised how positively people were responding to our new way of looking at shelter
dogs. When The Lost Dogs Home started receiving emails from other shelters around the world we knew
our idea had hit a chord.
We realised that this was an opportunity for The Lost Dogs Home and The Human Walking Program to
affect real change around the world, and decided to open-source all the creative and administrative
materials needed for animal shelters around the world to host their own Human Walking Program.
We created http://www.thehumanwalkingprogram.org (it’s still active if you want to write it down). To
date (April 28, 2015) we have had 2,051 registrations of interest and 673 downloads of creative
templates, artwork and materials.
We open sourced all the materials, making them free to download online:
The Australian Effie Awards
2015 Effie Entry Form Government or
Not For Profit & Cause Related Marketing
We’ve seen Human Walking Programs pop up all around America and Europe, we know of 28 for sure,
because they have contacted us to thank us and sent photos, but the real number is anyone’s guess.
Keep in mind we went open-source in April 2014, after the first event, so that’s 28 events globally in one
year. Sometimes the shelters use our artwork, some times they create their own. It doesn’t matter.
Globally we do not know how many dogs have been adopted, nor how many Humans have been walked,
but we do believe that our idea is changing the way people around the world look at shelter dogs.
Our little idea for a single shelter, on the outskirts of the Melbourne CBD has triggered something.
Something real and meaningful. Something that connects people to pooch with a slobbery lick!
Programs around the world:
The Australian Effie Awards
2015 Effie Entry Form Government or
Not For Profit & Cause Related Marketing
8. Did it achieve a positive ROI?
Social Return on Investment (SROI) is an increasingly common measurement in the social, government and NFP
sectors. It aims to place a monetary value on the social impact (the benefit) of an activity and compares this with
the cost incurred in creating that benefit. No set formula has yet been established to estimate the SROI of a
campaign, but judges will award additional marks to entrants who make an honest attempt to evaluate the return.
(Note – most studies to date are for the entire programme, not just the marketing elements).
"Why does watching a dog be a dog fill one with happiness?"
- Jonathan Safran Foer (Author, Extremely Loud and Incredibly Close)
We use numbers, stats, quotes and reports to measure the effectiveness of a campaign. Dogs and
humans, through a shared condition were brought together through the Human Walking Program.
We honestly believe that the impact of the lifelong bonds the Human Walking Program on two days in a
Melbourne park created can’t be measured. But lets have a look at thinking about ROI...
(Removed)
2. Media:
The Lost Dogs Home generated $230,000 of donated media. (Removed)
3. Economic Benefit:
(Removed)
The Australian Effie Awards
2015 Effie Entry Form Government or
Not For Profit & Cause Related Marketing
4. Social Benefit:
The Australian Companion Animal Council cites2, “Not only are pets wonderful companions they also
provide psychological and physiological benefits to owners. In addition, pets engender caring and
responsibility in our children, improve feelings of safety and help create social bridges in our
communities.”
The same report lists the following Social Benefits of pet ownership:
 Human Pet Bond: A very important fact about human/animal interaction is that it can actually
improve the quality of our lives.
 Pet owners say they often talk to their pet, with 81% of owners say they never feel alone when
they are with their pet  In 2008 a study examined changes in socio-demographic, environmental and intrapersonal
factors associated with dog acquisition and found evidence to suggest that dog acquisition leads
to increased walking levels and motivation of owners to exercise. Reducing the risk of
cardiovascular disease.
 Pets have been shown to greatly increase quality of life for the elderly including reduced tension,
fatigue and confusion and increased feelings of enthusiasm, interest and inspiration  For children it has been shown that growing up with a dog (and other pets to a lesser extent)
during infancy helps to strengthen the immune system and reduces the risk of allergies linked to
asthma.
We could go on. But the point is made, pets – and in this case, Dogs – equal happiness, community
connection and a better quality of life.
That’s the real ROI of dog ownership. 9. Convince us that the result was not due to other factors.
You must explain in your entry the effect of any other potentially relevant factors such as press coverage, economic
conditions, weather etc. You should acknowledge and estimate the role played by other factors and you should advise
if the communications program led to other benefits accruing, additional to those originally intended.
Advertising rarely works in isolation but the judges need to be convinced that your campaign had a major impact on
results.
There are factors that should be recognised:
Weather; We did have great weather, especially at the second event. That would have made an impact
on attendance.
Location; We changed location for the second Human Walking Program from Flagstaff Gardens (NW
fringe of the CBD) to the more popular Treasury Gardens (Eastern fringe of the CBD). This would have
had an impact on attendance at the event. But capitalising on the popularity of locations was part of the
idea.
Other campaign activity; no, there was no other dog adoption, cat adoption or general The Lost Dogs
Home awareness campaigns, publicity, open days, or media in the lead up to the events.
Product; we had amazing product to work with. Dogs. And taking them out of the shelter allowed them
2
“Contribution of the Pet Care Industry to the Australian Economy” (2012). Australian Companion Animal Council.
The Australian Effie Awards
2015 Effie Entry Form Government or
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to work their slobbery magic. That was kind of the idea.
Price; it costs $300 to adopt a dog (Prices include de-sexing, worming, first vaccination, microchip and
heartworm test). The price has not changed in over 12 months and there were no “sale” or discounting
events during the Human Walking Program.
Seasonality; the second event was held in November with the effect period running the first 3 weeks of
December. We could be picking up “Christmas” behaviour in this period. To account for this we have
averaged the weekly adoptions across two full calendar years.
10. Do you think there are any lessons to be learned from this case about
advertising effectiveness or measurement?
Judges will give additional marks to exceptional ideas, exceptional results and to cases that teach us something about how
advertising works. A big idea is worth more than a lesser idea. A case that adds to our knowledge about advertising
effectiveness or measurement deserves additional marks. These marks are open to the discretion of the judges. This is the
“I wish I’d been responsible for that” factor. Reward great ideas, great results, originality, innovative measurement
techniques. Penalise poorly written cases. High scores here will be the cases we want marketing students to be inspired by;
the cases we can learn something from; the cases we want to showcase to the world.
This little, local, activation teaches us two things:
1. That there is still power in the idea. That an idea, based on insight, executed well, no matter how
big, or in our case small, when it connects with people in one place, it connects with people in
many places.
2. That being generous with our ideas is rewarding. Open-sourcing, giving freely, we can affect
change in the world. We are not curing cancer in this paper, but we are showing that by sharing
and being free with our ideas we can connect people with their new best friends.
Ideas and generosity.
The Australian Effie Awards
2015 Effie Entry Form Government or
Not For Profit & Cause Related Marketing
AGENCY AND ADVERTISER AUTHORISATION
SIGNATURE FOR ENTRY BY COMPANY OFFICERS
We certify on behalf of:
____________________ (Agency CEO) and _________________
(Client Company CEO or equivalent)
that the information submitted for the attached campaign is a true and accurate portrayal of the objectives
and results of that campaign.
We also certify that the campaign has not been found in breach of any advertising or marketing codes or
in breach of any law within the Australian jurisdiction.
We acknowledge that the case study of this campaign may be published by The Communications Council
or with the authorisation of The Communications Council, but that we will have the opportunity to remove
such information from that case study that we regard as market sensitive or confidential.
_________________________________
Signature of Officer of Agency
__________________________________
Signature of Officer of Client Company
Title:
Company:
Date:
Title:
Company:
Date: