Campaign Overview

Battersea Dogs & Cats Home is one of the UK’s most iconic brands and a market leader in the rescue sector.* Every year, 250,000 animals are brought to rescue centres around the UK for all kinds of reasons. Most of them are much loved pets that through no fault of their own find themselves without a home. Battersea research shows that when considering a pet, whilst 92% of people say they believe rescue is the right thing to do, when the time comes to get a new pet, many choose to go online and search for a specific breed instead. And it was this behaviour which we wanted to turn on its head, shaking up the rescue category as a whole.

So we created Rescue Is Our Favourite Breed, a campaign designed to get people to look at rescue animals differently. Despite the fact that 1 in 4 cats and dogs are rescues, there’s a misconception that they are somehow damaged or broken. Well, nothing could be further from the truth. Rescue pets are the best pets, and they all deserve a second chance and a happy home. So we decided to elevate the category by elevating rescue animals to their own breed.

*Association of Dogs and Cats Homes http://www.adch.org.uk/

The Insight

 1 in 4 UK dogs and cats are rescues. Yet people still see them as damaged or undesirable.

The Idea

Show rescue animals as they’ve never been shown before: happy, healthy and bursting with fun and personality. And get people across the country to view them not as purebreds, mongrels or strays - but as their own unique breed. A key driver for this  was encouraging existing rescue owners to embrace and use the hashtag #RescueIsMyFavouriteBreed as a public statement of their support for rescue.

TV Launch

The campaign launched with a national :60 TVC, directed by two-time Emmy and two-time BAFTA winning director Mateo Willis (Planet Earth 2, Blue Planet.) Every animal in the film is a rescue, and they’re depicted in a heroic and inspiring light. Set to the track “Howlin’ For You” by the Black Keys, the spot highlights just how fun and amazing rescue pets can truly be. It ends with the with the powerful stat “1 in 4 dogs and cats are rescues,” and declares “the nation has decided: rescue is our favourite breed.”