Animal Strike
Paw Justice New Zealand
Issue 31 | June 2014
Agency
DDB New Zealand
Creative Team
Executive Creative Directors Andy Fackrell Creative Director Shane Bradnick Art Director James Conner Copywriter Christie Cooper Digital Designers Jason Vertongen Sam Schrey Illustrator Toby Morris
Production Team
Digital Producer Dov Tombs Developer Paul Myle Cameron Crosby Creative Art Buyer Nikita Kearsley Head of TV production Judy Thompson Producer Celia Rowe
Other Credits
Co-founder Paw Justice Craig Dunn General Manager Oliver Lynch Account Director Jenny Travers Senior Account Manager Crystal Clark Account Managers Lara Christie, Ida Levick Account Executive Genevieve Rogers Media Liaison Nathan Jeune-Manning Planning Director Lucinda Sherborne Digital Planner Michiel Cox Social Planner Jack Murphy
Date
September 2013
Background
In 2013 the New Zealand government passed a law that pushed the producers of legal party drugs to safety test them on dogs. Animal-rights activists, Paw Justice, wanted to create a campaign that would encourage people to force the government to review this law.
With very little money or time to get a petition into parliament, the task was to do something drastic to get the public behind the campaign. So the idea was
to show them the value of animals by making them live without them for a day.
Idea
The trouble with hard-hitting animal rights advertising is most people turn away from the horrific images. The solution in this instance was to think about the images people actually turn to each day, of cute kittens and sweet puppies.
A one-day strike was mounted with all online content featuring animals being blocked from view.
Collaborating with Google and YouTube, a 1.5 minute unskippable pre-roll was placed in front of all popular animal videos. Content creators were involved through a website where they could sign a petition and download a toolkit with html files, videos and JPEGs to use on their own sites and social media pages to block their own content.
The major TV stations also held back from all animal shows.
Results
They did it! The law was changed. Due to the immense amount of public pressure. Prime Minister John Key announced, "There will be no animal testing, either locally or internationally to support the application for a physco active substance".
- In only a few days over 58,000 petition signatures were received.
- Less than $5000 was spent yet it received a potential reach of over 22million.
- 98% of all those visited the website went on to sign the petition.
- 78% visited the website through social media channels.
- Over 120,000 people and their animals took part in the strike online either by uploading a strike message or participating on our facebook page.
Our Thoughts
Party pills are also known as ‘herbal highs’ and are legal in most parts of the world. They are relatively new and untested so I presume the New Zealand government ordered animal testing in order to be able to save human lives.
It seems as if the Kiwi public is almost as besotted with animals as the British. And this idea played to that obsession with great wit. What is clever is that it allows the imagination to create images of animals being abused far more horrible than any actual photograph and see the tests as being far more gruesome than they actually were.