Cover Page Send to a Friend Print Version Contact Us Advertise Post a Free Classified

Doggone, an ad
campaign to drool over

Beneath a billboard of a Great Dane is a puddle

By Toni Fitzgerald
Feb 11, 2010

Walking along a side street you step in a puddle. No big deal, but as you look down you remember it hasn't rained in days.

As it happens, the puddle has pooled beneath a gigantic poster of a Great Dane. The dog's pink tongue flops out of his mouth, and he's drooling. It looks as though the drool is running down the poster into the pool on the ground.

The dog's eyes stare wistfully at something on the wall of the opposite building.

You follow his gaze and see a picture of a large bag of dog food.

You get it: The hungry dog is drooling over the vittles he sees just a few feet away.

The poster is an ad for Royal Canin dog food, dreamed up by its German agency, Heye & Partner GmbH in Hamburg.

The agency came up with the idea while trying to figure out a way to show how much dogs like the taste of the dog food. This particular brand of chow in the poster is specially formulated for Great Danes.

The agency booked two billboards directly across from each other on a small side street in Hamburg in December. Each billboard is more than 10 feet tall.

The drool effect was achieved by installing a canister filled with jam sugar, a clear preserve used by cooks when making jelly, below the picture. The jam sugar dripped out of a short tube beneath the poster, giving the effect of a puddle of drool.

The stunt works because it puts a new spin on an old medium, the billboard, by adding a new element. Like a billboard in Ohio last year that featured steam rising up from a pizza, it makes passersby do a double-take, wondering if what they just saw was just a coincidence or actually part of the ad.

In this case, a drooling dog is instantly recognizable, and very relatable for dog owners. Plus, the location of the billboards, on a side street of a residential neighborhood, makes it likely that they will be seen by their intended target, people taking their dogs for a walk.

The billboard is too new to have produced any uptick in sales yet, but it received coverage in more than a dozen ad blogs across the world, including Adsoftheworld.com, where the notoriously critical readers gave it a solid 6.6 out of 10 stars. Most campaigns get three or four.

Toni Fitzgerald is a staff writer for Media Life.	© 2010 Media Life Magazine

Latest headlines CBS wins second Thursday of sweeps A media buyer's guide to the Olympics Feeling good about the Winter Games 'Hospital' heats up as Sonny shoots Dante 'How to Make It in America,' empty faces PTC to Fox: Step away from Howard Stern Rachel, I'm like entirely snowed under Best tube bets this weekend Jackie Stasi becomes partner and group media director at Mediaedge:cia Tom Weeks rises to head of Starcom branded entertainment division Bob Nelson becomes president at Eyeball Susan Taylor becomes managing director at Carat Alec Baldwin lands in the hospital Michelle Alban rises to VP of corporate communications at Telemundo Jeff Light becomes VP and editor at the San Diego Union-Tribune Ali Rowghani becomes CFO at Twitter