This morning I was woken up at 6am by my 12-year-old son tapping me on my head and saying: “Can I play Xbox?”. This is a common occurrence at the weekends. I especially like it when my 10-year-old daughter is sent in to wake me up, and does so by pulling my eyelids open before saying “Can I go on my tablet?” The answer is always: “You can go on screens at 7, go back to bed”. They know this, but they still tap my head or pull my eyelids. I’m not a good sleeper, so once woken up the best I can manage is Hypnagogia, the trippy like-state between wakefulness and sleep. I like this state. It’s when I have my best thought-starters, and why I always keep a notebook by my bed. I’m having a few days off at the moment so am actively trying not to think about the briefs in my inbox. Instead I directed my mind to the theme of “sleep”, which led me to think about the latest fantastic IKEA poster campaign (the one unbottling its products as sleep medicine – below), which led me to my favourite IKEA campaign, “Happiness Inside” (one hundred cats let loose in an IKEA store overnight to test the furniture – and who better than cats to demonstrate comfy sofas?), which led me to the theme of this post: ANIMALS. A convoluted and unnecessary introduction? Probably.
“Never work with animals or children” is an oft-used, but oft-misunderstood quote attributed to the old-time American comedian, WC Fields. Misunderstood because it wasn’t said to warn against the difficulties of working with animals and children, but to warn against the fact that animals and children always steal the show. I’ve worked on plenty of tactics that involve animals and it’s true, they provoke instant headlines, create genuine organic clicks (not factory-farmed-clicks), and are often a short-cut to delivering an otherwise hard-to-land branded message.
A few examples from my archives to prove the point… Elle “The Body” Macpherson’s dog, Bella “The Dog’s Body” Macpherson, as the face of dog fashion brand, Dogside; screening Twilight to wolves to mark the DVD launch of the film (I’m sure it already was, but having animals watching screens has become somewhat of a PR trope); flying betting odds over Celtic Manor using banner-carrying eagles and hawks for golf’s Ryder Cup (the Betfair Birdies caused quite a stir, albeit Paddy Power did sky-vertising properly two years later with its Sky Tweets stunt); hijacking the annual Superbrands list by parading Dulux dogs along Westminster Bridge and making sure our pictures stole the share of coverage even though the brand only came seventh (no rationale at all behind the Westminster Bridge location); hiring Bandai’s first security cat to “protect” the first UK shipment of ThunderCats toys; training ravens to deliver Alligiant films (‘cos a raven is the symbol of the main character, Tres, obvs); and coaxing a slug from a trained animal handler (we wanted to make sure we avoided any animal right’s criticism) to “pose” on an Amazon Kindle to promote ‘Sol the Slug’s Night Before Christmas’, the winning tale of a Kindle Direct Publishing competition to write a new Christmas Eve story.
From memory none of these tactics were easy to execute, but all delivered against their objectives and were deemed successful. Indeed, some even won awards. Looking at them all now you can clearly spot the formula; a pun, a picture, an animal-does-this-to-promote-that purpose. Nothing particularly strategic, nothing overly creative, and definitely purely tactical, not campaign-able. One that did have a bit more substance to it was “Feed Different” for Tails.com, the tailor-made dog food company, which believes in kibble-only diets for dogs. The idea worked for the brand, product and dog-owners who all see their pup as “different”. An unashamed pastiche of Apple’s “Think Different” for sure, but so brilliantly executed by filmmaker Gary Tarn that it stood alone. Convincing Sir Michael Gambon do the voiceover (he loves dogs) meant it generated a load of editorial coverage, but with no money for paid media, it was probably the right idea delivered at the wrong time for the brand.
So, my advice would be to never say never to working with animals as they do indeed steal the show, but do so knowing nine out of ten cats times it’s a one PR trick pony.
A load of old Barnum. 