2015 Winners & Shortlists

The Brief

If you’re Lebanese,you either, leave the country and join the 20 million Lebanese expats living abroad. Or you decide to stay in Lebanon in the hopes of making it a better country. But that means that you live in a country with a lot of things to worry about everyday.Animal rights is not top of the list. As a consequence, stray dogs fill the streets of Lebanon and go through famine, gun shots and all sorts of unthinkable acts of violence. So, how does BETA,whose soul purpose is to fight animal cruelty,get people to adopt these dogs?

Creative Execution

Local and international media picked up the campaign quickly, spreading it on social media, blogs, magazines, prime time news channels and talk shows. International coverage has spread across five continents. Bosnia’s Media Marketing even suggested that this program could be a great fixer for Bosnia’s problem with strays.As for Lebanon, the act was considered so extreme it immediately made its way onto the #1 Lebanese talk show, hayda haké.A prime time news segment of 4 minutes was dedicated to the expat pets program, inviting all Lebanese to go on the website and keep the Lebanese dogs in Lebanon.

Describe the creative solution to the brief/objective.

As a solution, we decided to ride the wave of the country: If the Lebanese leave for better opportunities abroad, then the Lebanese dogs will leave too. Introducing the expat pets program. We created a program that allows people from all countries to adopt the Lebanese dogs. We spread the news of the program through talk shows, blogs, online banners and social media channels, directing the entire world to a website: xpatpets.com. Visitors got to know each rescued dog, then could choose to keep it in Lebanon by adopting locally or give it an opportunity abroad by adopting internationally.

Results

Less than a month into the campaign, we saw a 400% increase in the users on the BETA website and 600% increase in the foreign users. And adoption requests began pouring in, with an increase of 200%. Finally, the Lebanese stray dogs found loving homes abroad. But surprisingly, 70% of the adoption requests came from the Lebanese. Beta’s act of sending the dogs abroad was perceived so extreme, it put animal rights back on top of their list. A few weeks later, the Lebanese Council of ministers gave the animal protection and welfare law, against animal cruelty, their official approval.