L'observatoire Data & Créativité by iligo

SelfieSTIX

Mars is an American global manufacturer of confectionery, pet food, and other food products and a provider of animal care services.

Humans like taking selfies and sharing them on social medias.
They especially enjoy taking selfies with their pets, dogs for example. However, dogs don’t seem to like taking selfies as much as humans.
Mars New Zeeland wanted to demonstrate the irresisbility of their product Pedigree DentaSTIX for dogs by helping dog owners to capture the perfect dog selfies, then promoting the brand by sharing those dog pictures on social medias.

At first, in order to make dogs concentrate on smartphone camera when taking selfies, the brand created SelfieSTIX. A specially designed phone accessory that attaches DentaSTIX to the phone. This accessory is given away with the product as a promotional item.
The promotional item was supported by the SelfieSTIX app : a smart camera filter like Snapchat lenses, but for dogs,
The SelfieSTIX app not only encouraged people to share their perfect doggy pics, it also encouraged repeat purchase of Pedigree DentaSTIX.

The brand trained a neural network to recognise dog faces by feeding it thousands of dog images.
Over time, the trained algorithm learned to recognise similar patterns across all images and then, whenever the dog looks at the camera, the app places a fun filter on its face.
SelfieSTIX was supported by an integrated campaign which directed people to get their free clip with any DentaSTIX purchase through Shopify or in store. It also ran across film, social, POS & influencers.