Doggelganger campaign makes ColensoBBDO top dog

ColensoBBDO has plenty to bark about after the advertising agency scooped eight gold awards for a campaign featuring software that matched human faces with homeless dogs.

The Doggelganger campaign also delivered the agency the Grand Axis for 2012 and earned Mars New Zealand the 2012 Creative Business of the Year accolade at the CAANZ Axis Awards last night.

Scott Coldham of ColensoBBDO, which is group account holder for the Mars account, says Mars is the parent company of the Pedigree Petfoods brand, which every year runs a campaign to boost the adoption of abandoned dogs.

A major challenge for the SPCA and others running shelters, he says, is to get people into the shelters, especially when shelter dogs are perceived as not being normal in some way.

Mr Coldham says there is also a belief that many owners also look like their pets in some way, which led to his agency staff to come up with Doggelganger, a play the word doppelganger for lookalikes.

“We have a relationship with a technology company and they use facial recognition, We saw an opportunity to merge these insights,” he told NBR ONLINE.

Hundreds of dogs at SPCA shelters had their pictures taken and they were downloaded onto a database.

The software allowed people to download their photos and the technology gave matches to dogs in the shelters.

“It was a lovely way to engage people with homeless dogs,” Mr Coldham says.

Since the campaign was launched last year, adoption rates shot up 112% and the website attracted five million hits, with 1.5 million matches between humans and dogs.

“These are ridiculously high numbers for a New Zealand website, which is still getting 5000 hits a day.

"With Pedigree being a global brand, Doggelganger may well be used overseas.

“There’s definitely being interest from other Pedigree markets to adapt or use it. It will live in on.” 

Mr Colham said the next adoption campaign is being worked on and Doggelganger will for part of it.

Overall, agency ColensoBBDO received 38 awards, including 15 gold trophies.

Other big winners included The Sweet Shop, awarded Production Company of the Year, and Murray Grindlay who won the Lifetime Achievement Award for his musical creation of many iconic Kiwi ads, including BASF Dear John and Cadbury Crunchie.

The Emerging Talent Award went to Kim Fraser of Special Group, who the judges believe demonstrated outstanding talent as a newcomer to the industry.

The AXIS Awards from the Communications Agencies Association of NZ attracted 578 entries, with 45 New Zealand and 5 international creatives judging them, including some from the UK.

A full list of winners is here.