Project Overview
BRIEF
Create a brand to solve a problem that has to do with pets. Impact 100 lives. Go!
PROBLEM
Senior dogs have an adoption rate of less than 25% compared to a 65% adoption rate for puppies. Seniors are more than often forgotten about when people consider adopting a new pet despite the many benefits of adopting a senior such as pre-training, known personality, calmness, and lots of love!
SOLUTION
Work with animal shelters to help get senior animals adopted by producing resumes that draw attention to these often ignored animals and gives prospective adopters a pre-made profile of their future companion.
BIG IDEA
The Insight
Pit bulls, injured, and elderly dogs are among the most “unadoptable” dogs out there. People tend to think that old dogs have already had a life with someone else and won't have a close connection to a new owner. Now imagine if employers had that same mindset; people value age and experience in the workplace, why not when adopting a pet?
To change the perception of old dogs, we created unique and personalized resumes filled with puns to bring attention to just how qualified senior dogs really are for adoption.
BRAND ASSETS
Logo & T-Shirt Design
When designing the GrownPups logo, I knew it had to have a LOT of personality, I mean have you ever met a senior dog? After many many sketches, my team and I narrowed it down to these bad boys. We decided to go with our sassy girl boss for the final design, so now it was time to come up with the t-shirt. We wanted a slogan that would capture the essence of our brand. So we thought... GrownPups are dogs at their peak. GrownPups are arguably the most qualified for the position of the best friend, in fact, GrownPups are the CEOs, b*tch. And there it was! (Of course, we didn't want to be too vulgar so we had to replace it with a female dog, in case you didn't catch it :))
ACTIVATIONS
"Pet"-working with Petspace
We were so excited for the opportunity to create resumes for all the senior pets at the Wallis Annenberg Petspace. In fact, they were so inspired by our mission, that they actually invited us to set up a table during a Senior Pet Adoption event they would be hosting! During the adoption event, we were able to connect with dog lovers to be an advocate for seniors. We handed out resumes, talked to shelters that we could help, and even got to meet the OG resume dogs!
8
animal shelters interested
200+
resumes handed out
In-Person Tabling
Because Annenberg was so successful, we decided to tackle the future of pet adopters: our own colleagues! We sat outside Loyola Marymount University's library to chat with students about senior pets, and sell our t-shirts.
LMU's very own mascot and therapy dog Buster even came to say hi!
100+
stickers handed out
15
shirts sold
IG Paid Social
Within a month of creating our Instagram, we were able to gain traction through some trial and error marketing methods. We reached out to as many pet-related pages as we could to self-promote, which helped us gain a community of almost 400 followers.
Targeting LA dog lovers, we also had great success with our paid media campaign. With a budget of $30, we were surprised to see both our sponsored posts gain over 17,000 impressions. For our first time messing with ad spend, we were not mad!
370+
followers
17,000+
overall impressions
OUTCOMES
Our Impact
Grown Pups was able to interact with hundreds of people over the course of the semester and change people’s preconceived ideas about old dogs.
To continue bringing awareness to senior dogs, we donated our proceeds to Susie’s Senior Dogs. SSD is a national organization that uses social platforms to bring attention to the plight of homeless senior dogs and uses donations to sponsor the needs of senior dogs. SSD has directly resulted in over 1200 senior dogs being adopted since 2014.
And finally, 8 of our seniors were either adopted or rescued.
