Super-Dog dog shelter: Dog dating
Agency: Grape
Brand: Super-Dog
Media: Ambient
Category: Public interest
Client: DogDating.ru
Agency: Hungry Boys
Geo: Russia
Super-Dog dog shelter: Dog dating
Advertising Agency: Hungry Boys, Russia
Creative Director: Vladimir Garev
Associate Creative Director: Artem Tsaregorodtsev
Creative: Nikolay Pruzhinin
Art Director: Alexey Fetisov
Producers: Anton Kopylov, Alexey Kosilin
Project Manager: Egor Reznikov
PR Manager: Rusina Lekukh
Copywriters: Natalya Varguleva, Olesya Velikanova
SMM: Vitaliy Akulov, Darya Lukinskaya
Video Production: ZebraHero
Published: December 2014
Product: social service for dog shelters
Grape, the POSSIBLE agency, has implemented an innovative volunteer project in Russia. The team decided to emphasize a very complicated and extremely bad illuminated problem: health and life risks for dogs kept in dog shelters.
Not so many people know that the first global problem every shelter faces is dogs’ savagery. Unfortunately, sooner or later dogs go wild as the shelters’ staff usually have no resources to pay attention on every pet there. Meanwhile the one and only chance for the dog to stay healthy in such stressful and unnatural environment is regular communication with a human being. Each dog living in a dog shelter statistically has 2 years to find a new owner. An aggressive and tameless animal has no chances to be adopted. The lack of human attention in this vicious circle is the main reason why the majority of shelter pets usually don’t live longer than these 2 years.
Grape found a shelter which was badly suffering from this particular problem. The first problem to solve was the following: how to motivate people to make a trip far from the city to have a walk with dogs? How to explain the target audience that helping is simple, joyful and fun?
This is how the service designed to meet and befriend people wishing to save shelter dogs was created. The service is represented through a website, where anyone authorized through social networks can choose a dog he likes, then a person he would love to have a trip with, and, finally, make a date and discuss its details in a special chat. Dog Dating creators have found and emphasized the romantic part of volunteering. Such goal as saving a dog’s life and health has a huge potential to unite people who may never meet under other circumstances. At the same time entourage of outside-the-city-date wafts romantic mood helping a couple to relax easier and find a lot in common.
The project got a great support from Russian media: from famous Youtube bloggers, marketing and lifestyle online media to federal TV channels. In just a week the project had attracted new visitors streaming to the shelter. Since then, over 1000 people met each other using Dog Dating, which ensured every dog’s safety. Every week up to 50 new couples of «walking volunteers» come to the shelter to spend their time together.
After a month of project’s work different Russian shelters expressed a desire to join Dog Dating as it proved its effectiveness and gave lots of shelters hope literally to save dogs’ lives. To facilitate the process of joining the project, Grape created a special platform. Every dog shelter from any city or country can get authorized on dogdating.ru, get the access to the administration panel and manage all the volunteering process. Joining Dog Dating is absolutely free to any shelter. More than 10 dog shelters from different CIS countries have already applied to become Dog Dating residents. The Grape team hopes this idea will be supported widely.