Pedigree Found the Missing Dog Problem Worth Solving

Why the New Zealand Pet Market Made Found a Strategically Sharp Bet for Pedigree

Pedigree operates in one of the most competitive categories in packaged consumer goods. Mars Petcare, Pedigree's parent company, generated revenue of approximately US$17.224 billion in 2015 pet-care sales, according to Petfood Industry, while Nestlé Purina PetCare reported approximately US$11.917 billion in 2015 revenue, also per Petfood Industry. Those two companies together accounted for a commanding share of the worldwide pet-food market, which Petfood Industry placed at approximately US$70 billion globally in 2015. In that environment, margin differentiation through product alone is difficult. Brand equity built on genuine owner insight becomes the more durable competitive asset.

Colenso BBDO Auckland identified a universal anxiety among dog owners — the fear of losing a pet — and recognised that mobile technology in New Zealand had reached sufficient penetration to make a geo-targeted solution viable. The strategic logic was precise: address a real, emotionally charged problem that competitors such as Nestlé Purina had not yet owned, and do so using a medium, the smartphone, that dog owners already carried. Rather than producing a campaign that talked about Pedigree's care for dogs, Found demonstrated it through a service that worked. As reported by Netimperative, the campaign achieved meaningful adoption figures within three months of launch, with ten percent of New Zealand dog owners downloading the app and ninety-one percent of those users registering their dogs inside it. That conversion ratio between download and registration indicates an audience that engaged with genuine intent rather than passive curiosity. The strategy aligned with Pedigree's global "Feed the Good" positioning by anchoring the brand's purpose to a measurable, locally relevant act of community benefit in New Zealand.

The Craft Behind Colenso BBDO Auckland's Google-Powered Lost Dog Alert System

Found represents a category of creative work in which the product is the idea. Colenso BBDO Auckland, led by executive creative director Nick Worthington, constructed a campaign whose entire creative output was a functioning piece of mobile infrastructure rather than a traditional media asset. The agency built a mobile application, negotiated a live integration with the Google Display Network, and engineered a geo-targeting mechanism that converted registered-user location data into triggered display placements — all in service of a single, legible proposition: use the internet to find lost dogs.

The creative decision to route alerts through Google's advertising network rather than a closed peer-to-peer system was both a production choice and a strategic amplifier. It meant that Found alerts could reach any registered user browsing any Google Display Network property within the defined radius, dramatically expanding the potential audience for each missing-dog notification beyond what a proprietary push system could achieve. The user experience inside the app was designed to minimise friction at the moment of highest emotional stress: an owner reporting a missing dog needed to act quickly, and the interface reflected that urgency. Andy Blood and Matt Lawson are among the creative leads associated with Colenso BBDO Auckland's work during this period, and the Found campaign reflects the agency's established approach of solving a human problem first and fitting the brand into the solution rather than the reverse. The campaign's single registered media asset belies the technical complexity of the system underneath it. Production credits beyond the core agency team are not publicly documented in available records.

Cannes Lions Recognition and Measured Impact of Pedigree Found in New Zealand

Found earned measurable recognition at the highest level of the advertising industry. At the 2015 Cannes Lions International Festival of Creativity, the campaign received both a Silver Lion and a Bronze Lion in the Mobile Lions category, as confirmed by Cannes Lions records cited across Stoppress and Campaign Live. Those two awards placed Colenso BBDO Auckland's work among the most formally recognised mobile campaigns produced globally that year, a significant achievement for a campaign conceived and executed entirely within the New Zealand market.

Performance data reported by Netimperative provides concrete evidence of genuine consumer adoption. Within three months of the campaign's April 2015 launch, ten percent of New Zealand dog owners had downloaded the Found app, and ninety-one percent of those who downloaded it went on to register their dogs. That second figure is particularly instructive. A ninety-one percent registration rate among downloaders suggests that the app delivered on its stated promise clearly enough that users completed the full onboarding process — a behaviour that passive or curiosity-driven downloads rarely produce. No further breakdown of alert activations or confirmed reunions is publicly available in independently verified sources.

Clapboard rates Found at 76 out of 100, reflecting a campaign that demonstrates strategic integrity and executional precision while operating at a scale — one market, one app, one media partnership — that limits the breadth of its documented impact. The campaign's structural effectiveness is high: it converts brand purpose into a utility, earns trust through usefulness, and anchors Pedigree's identity to a moment of genuine owner need in New Zealand rather than to a declared value that asks consumers to take the brand's word for it.