Dog food brand Lyka has launched a new campaign with Channel 7 that sees dog poo take centre stage.
Lyka’s ‘Poo on the Ground’ campaign launched yesterday and will run for the remaining AFL home-and-away season.
The campaign was produced in partnership with Channel 7, with media managed by Alchemy One.
Starring footy legend Billy Brownless, the campaign sees the TV and radio personality make an unlikely discovery on the hallowed turf: a perfectly formed dog poo. As he celebrates the unexpected marker of a healthy dog, a red labrador races onto the field – prompting the only logical conclusion: it must be a Lyka dog.
Designed to make audiences do a double take and question whether a dog actually made its way onto the field, the campaign integrates a national TV commercial inside live AFL coverage; cleverly turning the language of “performance”, “delivery” and “clean disposal” into a cheeky celebration of dog health, reaching millions of AFL fans across the country.
The campaign forms part of Lyka’s broader “Poo Glorious Poo” strategy, which is underpinned by Australia’s first peer-reviewed fresh dog food study, conducted by the University of Sydney and published in Frontiers.
The research found dogs fed Lyka experienced visibly improved stool quality, greater gut microbiome diversity, steadier blood sugar levels and more favourable appetite-hormone responses compared to dogs fed kibble, with measurable improvements observed in as little as two weeks.
“We knew that to get people talking about dog poo, we couldn’t be subtle about it,” said Cam Luby, CMO at Lyka.
“The AFL gives us one of the biggest stages in the country, and “Poo on the Ground” lets us own a moment that’s impossible to ignore. But the cheek and boldness only works because the science backs it up – better poo is one of the first things owners notice when they switch to Lyka, and now we get to prove it in front of millions.”
“If we can get spectators to do a double take and genuinely wonder whether a dog poo has made its way onto an AFL field, and spark a conversation in the process, then we’ve achieved our goal,” Luby continued.
“The AFL season delivers some of the most engaged and attentive audiences in Australia,” said Joel Trethowan, Managing Director, Alchemy One. “There aren’t many brands brave enough to build an AFL campaign around dog poo. But that’s exactly why it works. Lyka’s taken one of the country’s biggest sporting stages and given audiences something they won’t see coming, and won’t forget.”
The campaign will also extend to SCA’s Triple M’s AFL coverage, featuring 30 second in-broadcast spots and branded integrations during the network’s post-match MVP discussions throughout the remainder of the regular season.
Lyka’s AFL campaign will run throughout the remainder of the season on Channel 7 until September.
Credits
CLIENT: Lyka
Media Agency: Alchemy One
Production: Channel 7
