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How Pedigree and CLM BBDO Turned Instagram Dogs Into Adoption Advocates
Pedigree's 'Dogs have dogs' campaign, launched in France in April 2018 by CLM BBDO, used popular French dog Instagram accounts to temporarily feature adoptable shelter dogs of the same breed, directing engaged followers toward the dog adoption platform agirpourladoption.fr.
The campaign operates on a single, precise mechanism. French dogs with established Instagram followings surrendered their profiles — temporarily and transparently — to abandoned dogs of the same breed. Followers who engaged with those accounts as they normally would were, in effect, already connecting with a dog in need of a home. At the point of highest engagement, the accounts directed audiences to agirpourladoption.fr, a dedicated adoption resource. The campaign contained one primary media asset and was classified under the digital medium.
In France, the abandonment of dogs remains a persistent social challenge, making the emotional architecture of 'Dogs have dogs' directly relevant to its home market. Pedigree, a brand with decades of equity built around dogs' unconditional value to human lives, positioned this campaign not as traditional advertising but as a functional act of adoption advocacy. CLM BBDO, the Paris-based agency behind the work, rooted the strategy in the behavioural reality of how French audiences already consume pet content on social platforms. The campaign earned a Clapboard Score of 74 out of 100, reflecting strong creative concept and execution within the constraints of a single digital asset.
The campaign's geographic focus on France in 2018 gave it a specific cultural resonance. Rather than operating as a global brand exercise, 'Dogs have dogs' was a locally executed idea with a precisely defined social purpose: to connect people who already love dogs on Instagram with dogs that urgently need homes.
CLM BBDO identified a behavioural gap at the heart of the French pet-content landscape. Dog lovers who followed popular canine Instagram accounts were demonstrating genuine affection and sustained attention — yet that emotional energy was directed at dogs who already had homes. The strategic leap was to redirect that same affection, using the same channels and the same follower behaviour, toward dogs awaiting adoption.
This approach reflects a broader truth about influencer platforms: audiences form real attachments to the animals they follow, not merely to the format. By temporarily replacing a beloved Instagram dog with an adoptable dog of the same breed, CLM BBDO preserved the visual and emotional continuity that followers expected, while substituting the subject. The narrative shift was subtle enough to sustain engagement and sharp enough to land a meaningful message.
Within the global pet-food category, Pedigree operates in a competitive landscape dominated by Mars Petcare and Nestlé Purina. According to todaysveterinarybusiness.com, Mars Petcare held estimated 2018 sales of approximately US$18.1 billion, representing close to 19.9 percent of global pet-food market share. Nestlé Purina ranked second with estimated 2018 sales of approximately US$13.2 billion, representing approximately 14.5 percent of global pet-food market share, according to todaysveterinarybusiness.com. Pedigree is a Mars Petcare brand, placing it within the market-leading portfolio, but the competitive pressure from Nestlé Purina brands such as Purina ONE and Pro Plan means that purpose-led campaigns carry strategic weight beyond awareness alone — they build brand preference in a category where product differentiation is difficult to sustain on functional grounds alone.
BBDO won Pedigree's global business in 2011, according to campaignlive.com, with a brief to evolve the existing 'Dogs Rule' platform. The 'Feed the Good' global platform, which launched in 2015, established the creative lineage from which 'Dogs have dogs' descends — a lineage grounded in the proposition that dogs bring out the good in people, according to caples.org. The French execution of 2018 applied that philosophy to a specific social platform and a specific social need in France.
CLM BBDO built the creative execution of 'Dogs have dogs' around the conventions of Instagram pet content rather than against them. The campaign's creative intelligence lies in its refusal to interrupt the user experience. Instead of placing an adoption message alongside dog content, the agency replaced the dog itself — making the adoption case through the act of looking, not through explicit persuasion.
Each participating French dog Instagram account maintained its visual aesthetic and posting rhythm during the campaign period. The adoptable dogs featured were matched by breed to the account's regular subject, preserving the visual familiarity that followers had come to expect. This breed-matching decision was not incidental; it was the load-bearing creative choice. It allowed the campaign to operate invisibly within the normal consumption habits of French Instagram users until the moment of reveal and redirect to agirpourladoption.fr.
The campaign was executed as a digital-only initiative, containing a single primary media asset. Its production model was inherently lean — the platform infrastructure already existed, the influencer accounts already had audiences, and the shelter dogs provided the content. The craft resided in curation, coordination, and the precision of the strategic conceit rather than in production scale.
Production credits for 'Dogs have dogs' are not publicly documented in available trade sources. The campaign was submitted to Cannes Lions 2018 under the agency name CLM BBDO, the Paris-based BBDO network affiliate. According to musebyclios.com, the campaign received recognition at Cannes Lions 2018, where it won a Silver Lion in the Mobile category under Influencer and Talent, and was shortlisted in the Media category for Use of Social Platforms as well as in Health and Wellness under Animal Health. The campaign also won Gold in Digital at Eurobest 2018, according to available award records.
No verified performance data for 'Dogs have dogs' — including adoption conversion rates, reach figures, or engagement metrics — is publicly available in trade press or brand-published sources. The campaign was not reviewed in Campaign, Ad Age, Adweek, The Drum, or Contagious based on available research.
Its award record, however, provides a proxy for industry-assessed effectiveness. The campaign won a Silver Lion in the Mobile — Influencer and Talent category at Cannes Lions 2018, according to award records cited by musebyclios.com. It was also shortlisted at the same festival in the Media — Use of Social Platforms category and in Health and Wellness — Animal Health, according to available Cannes Lions records. At Eurobest 2018, the campaign won Gold in Digital, a result consistent with strong regional recognition for digital craft in France and across Europe.
Structurally, the campaign demonstrates effectiveness principles that do not require metrics to assess. It eliminates the friction between awareness and action by embedding the adoption ask inside an existing behaviour — following dog content on Instagram — rather than demanding a separate act of attention. The breed-matching mechanism removes the psychological distance between the follower's established affection and the unfamiliar shelter dog. The redirect to agirpourladoption.fr completes a short, coherent journey from passive engagement to active consideration. These structural qualities explain both its award success and its Clapboard Score of 74 out of 100, which reflects a high-concept idea executed within the constraints of a single digital asset and a single geographic market, France.
Pedigree's 'Dogs have dogs' was a 2018 digital campaign by CLM BBDO in France. Popular French dog Instagram accounts temporarily featured adoptable shelter dogs of the same breed, directing followers to agirpourladoption.fr. The campaign used existing follower affection as a bridge to dog adoption awareness rather than conventional advertising interruption.
CLM BBDO, the Paris-based BBDO network affiliate, created 'Dogs have dogs' for Pedigree in France. CLM BBDO is part of the global BBDO network, which has held Pedigree's global advertising account since 2011, according to campaignlive.com, and has developed purpose-led creative work for the brand across multiple markets.
The campaign won a Silver Lion at Cannes Lions 2018 in the Mobile — Influencer and Talent category, according to award records cited by musebyclios.com. It was also shortlisted in Media — Use of Social Platforms and Health and Wellness — Animal Health at the same festival, and won Gold in Digital at Eurobest 2018.
CLM BBDO matched popular French dog Instagram accounts with adoptable shelter dogs of the same breed. The accounts temporarily posted content featuring the shelter dogs, preserving visual familiarity for existing followers. At the moment of highest engagement, accounts directed followers to agirpourladoption.fr, converting passive pet-content consumption into active adoption consideration in France.
Pedigree's 'Dogs have dogs' receives a Clapboard Score of 74 out of 100. The score reflects the campaign's high-concept creative idea and precise strategic execution within the constraints of a single digital asset, balanced against the absence of publicly verified performance data and its focus on a single market, France.
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