Reddy creates sustainable dog clothing, gear and accessories. As the brand looked to expand, they turned their eyes to New York City to launch their first flagship store. We needed to alert people to this grand opening and drive foot traffic to the new brick-and-mortar location. So, to announce that the doggy doors were now open, we created a ‘scent-sory’ tour through the streets of SoHo. Using fragrances attached to guerilla ‘paw print’ pavement decals and wild postings a specific scent trail was designed to activate a dog's tracking instincts and drive pets, and their parents, to this new dog-friendly destination.
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Not only do dogs have hundreds of millions of scent receptors compared to our little six million, but by tapping into the full ability of their incredible noses, we could bypass people needing to remember an address and simply let dogs’ noses lead the way. A blend of duck, quail and pheasant scents activated each dog’s natural tracking instincts as they traversed the mile-long scent trail from Washington Square Park through the streets of SoHo.
In their daily lives, dogs don’t typically get to flex their amazing sense of smell—we tend to hurry them along for walks to suit our schedules. But a dog navigates the world with their nose, much like humans do with their eyes. This sensory experience tapped into the fact that smell lies at the very center of how our dogs behave.
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Our dogs “see” the world through scent, and we often overlook how powerful their noses are as a processing tool. Each fragrance took advantage of this truth as unique messaging along the route playfully poked fun at every dog's newfound fascination for these smells and what awaited in-store.
The act amplified the opening well beyond the confines of the physical store imprint itself, generating a massive amount of awareness and hype through earned media. Total impressions around the store opening totaled more than 588 million and sales the day of the stunt totaled 60% of all weekly sales, nearly doubling Petco’s Union Square flagship store’s total weekly sales.
The behavior change flowed from the success of the opening. Now that a high-end pet boutique was open in the epicenter of fashion, shoppers with the desire and need to purchase gear for their pets could visit one store to fulfill all their pet-shopping needs. To direct them there, all we did was disrupt the daily dog walk to drive visits locally and drum up awareness nationally: a simple use of smell to invite pets, and their parents, to come take a sniff around.