1 GRRRADE

Title1 GRRRADE
BrandMARS LLC
Product/ServicePEDIGREE
Category H01. Integrated Multi-Platform Campaign (Online & Offline)
Entrant BBDO Moscow, RUSSIA
Idea Creation BBDO Moscow, RUSSIA
PR MINT Moscow, RUSSIA
Production ASAP PRODUCTION Moscow, RUSSIA
Credits
Name Company Position
Olga Kostrova Mars Petcare Russia Marketing Director
Nailya Alieva Mars Petcare Russia Senior Brand Manager PEDIGREE®
Anastasiya Savkina Mars Petcare Russia Brand Manager PEDIGREE®
Natalia Mikhaylova Mars Petcare Russia Digital Manager
Maria Pogorelko Mars Petcare Russia Digital Specialist
Natalia Tsyganova BBDO Russia Group Managing Director
Alexey Fedorov BBDO Russia Group Executive Creative Director
Natasha Teddy BBDO Russia Group Creative Group Head
Natalia Pavlova BBDO Russia Group Senior Art Director
Alyona Ivanova BBDO Russia Group Digital Creator
Anna Kuzicheva BBDO Russia Group Digital Art Director
Polina Pukhlikova BBDO Russia Group Junior Copywriter
Ulia Petrova BBDO Russia Group Senior Producer
Dmitry Rubezhov BBDO Russia Group Music Producer
Elizaveta Grigorieva BBDO Russia Group Assistant Producer
Yuriy Marin BBDO Russia Group Senior Digital Producer
Denis Zavgorodniy BBDO Russia Group TV Studio Manager
Alexandra Sagalovich BBDO Russia Group Digital Excellence Director
Evgeniya Lukonina BBDO Russia Group Digital Analyst
Anastasiya Dubrovskaya BBDO Russia Group Client Services Director
Katrin Auashria BBDO Russia Group Account Director
Julia Borisova BBDO Russia Group Account Manager
Kirill Kulagin ASAP Production Director
Asya Kotelnikova ASAP Production General Producer
Max Kuzmin BBDO Russia Group Creative Producer
Oleg Karpachev ASAP Production Music Composer
Sergey Vereykin PR & SM Agency Mint (BBDO Russia Group) Chief Executive Officer
Maria Kirienko PR & SM Agency Mint (BBDO Russia Group) Senior Project Manager
Anna Petukhova PR & SM Agency Mint (BBDO Russia Group) Social Media Manager

Background

Dogs are beneficial to children: they teach kids responsibility and build empathy. Waltham® Centre for Pet Nutrition, in its study on human-animal interaction, found that 75% of kids sought out their pets when they were upset. Close relationships with dogs have also been linked to the development of more positive behavior among children. But kids don’t realize that a dog brings daily work and responsibility. They beg their parents for a pet, but sometimes after they finally get a dog, kids play with it for a while and then forget about it. The animal becomes a burden for everyone. PEDIGREE® cares deeply about dogs’ wellbeing and believes that dogs help children to mature and become responsible. Our idea was to launch an educational programme that would help children prove that they can be responsible dog owners.

Describe the strategy

September 1st is the start of a new school year in Russia, and it’s always a big date for children and their parents. September and October are the most active months for educational communication in digital media. Our goal was to provide a useful tool for kids, 1st-3rd grade pupils, and their parents. The documentary film about the offline program was promoted to a broad audience, reaching all dog lovers in social networks and on YouTube and raising awareness of the project. We hosted the online course on Dnevnik.ru, the largest educational online portal in Russia, reaching over 7 000 000 schoolchildren and precisely targeting 7-12 y.o pupils. Kids could use their accounts to sign up to the course. Outside the portal, “1st Grrrade” campaign was supported on social networks, traditional and social media with the mix of educational and fun materials targeting parents specifically.

Describe the execution

To kick off the programme, we conducted a real course in a Moscow school offering 1st-3rd grade pupils the chance to prove to their parents that they could be responsible dog owners. Teachers, psychologists and professional pet trainers took children through 6 weeks of theory and practice to prepare them for the realities of dog ownership. An uplifting documentary film was developed capturing the emotional ups and downs of the programme. The film was launched on September 1st on YouTube and was promoted on social networks with a 30” trailer. To drive the program’s scale, PEDIGREE® simultaneously launched an online course, so that EVERY kid in Russia could prove that he or she could be a responsible dog owner. The course consists of 10 interactive lessons with videos, tests and supporting materials, and it was hosted on the national digital diary that all schools use to manage timetables and grades.

List the results

1st Grrrade programme was the first online course in Russia to educate kids on how to take care of a dog. The program reached 7 000 000 kids on Dnevnik.ru, Russia’s digital diary for schoolchildren. 65% of pupils who took the course returned to the project and one in 15 earned the diploma. On average, 1st Grrrade participants visited 9.5 pages per session, 475% higher than expected, and the session duration was 14 minutes. The film: more than 12 million views on YouTube, a leader on Ads Leaderboard. Campaign reached 166 000 000 media and PR impressions and hit the headlines in traditional and social media: 140+ print and online titles published stories about 1st Grrrade together with celebrities and bloggers. The response PEDIGREE® received was overwhelming: thousands of children, and even adults, confirmed they’d been dreaming about a course like this, and schools demanded it for their pupils.