Grey Africa was recognised at the prestigious Creative Circle Awards for its work on the National Council of SPCA’s Dog Fighting campaign which took place in the middle of last year. The agency won third place in the Outdoor and Out of Home (OOH) category.
The NSPCA together with their advertising agency got tongues wagging on Monday, 27 June 2016 by promoting a dog fight on a mobile trailer which was seen parked and driving along various popular traffic spots in Johannesburg.
The pre-reveal trailer brazenly advertised a tournament between Nitro and Thor, two aggressive looking pit bulls, and called for interested parties to book their spot by calling a mobile number or by completing the online form which was available on www.cajunrules.co.za
The campaign was carefully planned to issue the PR reveal at the peak of the outrage. We thought it might take up to three days for the outrage to reach its peak and planned to be rolled out over a three-day period with the reveal taking place towards the afternoon of Wednesday, 29 June 2016. Having monitored the interaction online, we decided to reveal sooner. The awareness campaign was revealed that Monday afternoon with the messaging ‘Did this dog fight make you see red? Stand up against dog fighting!’ The call to action was for the public to SMS ‘STOP’ to 38018 at a charge of R25 per SMS.
“We really did place ourselves on the line when we conceptualised and carried out the campaign. Not only was it a creative risk, but a reputational risk as well. To date, we are thrilled to see the campaign receive the recognition and respect it so deserves,” said Fran Luckin, chief creative officer at Grey Advertising.
“We’re even more excited about the results the campaign has achieved,” said Luckin. So far, the campaign has wrought enormous success – To date, there have been 29 arrests made and 113 dogs rescued. In addition, the strength of the public outcry has enabled the NSPCA to successfully lobby the South African Judiciary for harsher sentences in dogfighting cases. We also achieved success with the South African judiciary who has relooked the crime of dog fighting and started handing down stricter sentences.
With zero media spend, the company earned an impressive R1 727 012, 34 in advertising value. The campaign also won two gold awards and scooped the Newcomer of the Year award at the Assegai Awards late last year.
The Creative Circle is a non-profit organisation dedicated to promoting creativity as a business resource and maintaining high levels of creativity in the SA advertising industry.
