• by Tanya Gazdik , Yesterday

A legacy dog food brand and a direct-to-consumer company both feature real consumers in new creative. 

Pedigree takes the approach that “the dog food category has become complicated, filled with competing claims and ever-changing health trends that leave owners unsure about what really matters.”

The brand’s new campaign from Colenso BBDO aims to remind pet parents that the dog they grew up with was probably fed Pedigree, which “is a testament to the brand’s quality nutrition over the years.”  

Creative feature real childhood photographs and films from pet parents around the world to create a celebration of the goodness of dogs and the food they know and love.  

The "Good Then, Better Now” platform will initially launch in the U.S. across social, TV, print and AV, with more to come later this year, according to the agency. 

Meanwhile, Spot & Tango’s Unkibble, a direct-to-consumer dog nutrition brand, is launching its largest marketing investment in company history.

After building its business largely through digital channels and word-of-mouth, the company is making its first significant above-the-line advertising push -- a multimillion dollar, multipronged campaign. The company’s marketing spending is up 50% this year, with $3.5 million going into TV and OOH alone, according to the brand.

S&T's TV buy spans streaming and linear: Paramount, Peacock, and Hulu on the streaming side; A&E, Bravo, ESPN, Fox Sports, Nat Geo, and others on linear, running during major prime-time sports and entertainment programming.

Rather than producing polished, studio-driven spots, S&T is featuring real customers who already feed their dogs UnKibble and other S&T products. Creators were selected based on prior performance and engagement on social ads, bringing authentic testimonials to premium placements that typically go to high-production campaigns.

The concept, strategy, and creative direction originated with Spot & Tango, with production and edit support by Jack Creative.

For OOH, S&T partnered with creative agency DayJob on a spring expansion into street-level placements, billboards, and mobile truck-side ads across New York City. The campaign launches this week in three waves through May; truck-side ads via Adgile extend reach into high-traffic commuter corridors. A subway car takeover is planned for third quarter. 

The creative is built around a visible concept: because of S&T's Fresh Dry process, every piece of UnKibble contains whole ingredients, real fruits and vegetables you can actually see, as opposed to uniform brown pellets.