The Humane Society of the United States, the nation’s largest animal protection organization, needed help launching its first-ever national puppy mill awareness and education campaign.

Ever since the Internet became a place to buy products, puppy mill operators have become savvy at selling dogs online—even with next day delivery. And people looking to bring pets into their families are simply not aware that they are perpetuating a system of inhumane puppy mills operated by breeders with no regard for animal welfare.

Our campaign aimed to educate prospective puppy buyers by showing the absurdity of treating puppies like products. At the center of the effort was a fictional service offering same-day delivery of puppies via drone. We gave it an adorable fake promotional video, a slick website (SameDayPups.com) and real paid media that drove prospective puppy purchasers to the site.

Making the most of a fairly lean media budget, we plastered popular puppy-related sites with fake banner advertisements for SameDayPups, purchased ads targeting the top search terms that prospective puppy purchasers used to begin their online research, and promoted the SameDayPups fake promotional video on social media and through PR.

After only five weeks, we had delivered a total of 28 million media impressions and had over 111,000 unique visitors to our sites. Search ads for SameDayPups.com dominated the results of the most popular online puppy buying keywords. And thousands of possible puppy purchases were intercepted.

Commentary by Sean Miller: “Working on the Humane Society's Anti-Puppy Mill campaign was an incredibly rewarding experience. With a small budget but a big hearted ambition, we tried to get to a unique angle on the puppy purchase process. It started with our strategy team fanning out to dog parks throughout the city to ask people about how they acquired their dogs and what they know about puppy mills. We created a new kind of consumer segmentation and brought fresh thinking to way the Humane Society could appeal to the best in people without making them feel guilty or being a total downer.”