Colenso BBDO

Client: Mars
Product: Pedigree
Title: DentaSTIX Studios
Media: Advertising
Country: New Zealand
Date Of Campaign: January 2020 - April 2020

Background: Social media brings out the worst in us. A UK study found that when on social media our boastfulness grows by 54%, selfishness by 66%, and egocentricity by 37%. Dogs, on the other hand, make us the best version of ourselves. Even simply looking at dogs can boost serotonin (happiness), oxytocin (love), and reduce cortisol (calm).DentaStix is a daily-use oral health treat for dogs. However, growth for this functional treat comes from treating as a bonding moment. We needed an emotionally led way to drive daily use and to align the product to the cultural rituals of contemporary humans.

Idea: We harnessed the goodness of dogs to make people feel good on social media, by creating Pedigree DentaStix Studios - an app for dog owners to create unique, sharable doggy content, designed to offset the bad things people see on social media. DentaStix Studios measures negativity on social, then uses leading-edge mobile technology to help dogs solve it.Pedigree DentaStix Studios’ bespoke algorithm measures trending hashtags to determine which social media topics are making people feel bad. It analyzes everything from filters used, the type of imagery posted, language, sentiment and more. The app then recruits dog owners to post unique dog content with these negative hashtags, to offset the images that make people feel bad, with dog images to make them feel good. For example, this means that people following #fitspo will see more beautiful dogs than overly filtered, too-perfect sculpted humans.In order to create next-level doggy content, people needed to use a Pedigree DentaStix treat in unison with the app. DentaStix Studios uses a custom pose estimation model, trained with over 50,000 images. When a DentaStix treat is held in front of the camera by human or dog, it replaces the treat in-camera with fun props for dogs to play with. This allowed us to turn DentaStix treats into a regular treating ritual, for our 18-35 year-old, social-media-savvy audience. And the result - sharable doggy content, designed to change social media for the better.

Results: Our desired response was to get people sharing their dogs using negative hashtags, while purchasing DentaStix treats along the way. The content people shared, boosted the good in social media 24x. They used 350,348 filters, which meant owners and dogs were getting more quality time together. On average, those who shared to social platforms share 4.2x eachDentaStix sales saw a massive increase. With +151% sales uplift versus the same week year prior, +28% growth on the previous quarter, annual household penetration up to 29% of New Zealand dog owners and +3 quarterly penetration points versus the same time year prior.