The astonishing “Animal Alerts” project helped Serviceplan to secure the Agency of the Year title. Global CCO Alex Schill tells us how it came about.
Anybody who has a pet knows that they’re very different to us. They’re happy to share our world, but their experience of it is by no means the same. Dogs, for example, have a number of gifts that resemble superpowers, from their absurdly powerful sense of smell to the ability to detect changes in air pressure, as well as low-frequency sounds. Turns out they can also predict earthquakes – a talent that inspired Serviceplan to create a potentially life-saving innovation.
We’ll get to the details in a moment, but first let’s take a peek under Serviceplan’s hood. The agency had a particularly impressive year at the Epica Awards, with more than 20 awarded projects, most of them from Germany. Is that just business as usual, or is something else driving it?
Alex Schill, the agency’s Global Chief Creative Officer, confirms: “Indeed, it was an amazingly successful year for us. Actually the best year since our foundation in 1970, I think because we had a lot of impactful and innovative projects. If you come up with something totally new and disruptive, which we try to do, it stirs people up and grabs their attention.”
I don’t want to work in an advertising agency. I want to work in an agency that solves problems.
Integrated from day one
The agency’s mantra is ÜberCreativity, which as Alex puts it, “doesn’t mean being more creative than others, it means bringing together different cultures, talents, disciplines and ways of thinking to solve a problem.”
This integrated approach is built in to Serviceplan’s DNA. Its founder, Dr Peter Haller – who created the agency with Rolf Stempel – always saw it as a multi-disciplinary agency rather than an “advertising” business. Around the world it’s organised into Houses of Communication, which means that the technology, creative and media teams are always gathered under one roof. Fewer walls, better collaboration.
Alex himself says: “I don’t want to work in an advertising agency. I want to work in an agency that solves problems.” The solution is sometimes driven by technology – and is often experimental. “Actually it’s one of the thing that differentiates us, because it’s hard to compare our work to that of others. Even if you create a really good TVC, it’s easy to see how it stands up to other TVCs. But a lot of our work stands alone.”
That certainly goes for “Animal Alerts”, as well as other award-winning projects like “855-How To Quit (Opioids)”. While Alex can’t personally work on every project the agency puts out, he strives to instil a culture of teamwork and inquisitiveness that leads to groundbreaking ideas.
From Berlin to Lima
While solutions can come from anywhere, he adds, technology increasingly plays a role. “As agencies we have to be where our audiences are. And today we’re all technology-oriented; we’re on our mobiles all day, we’re on social all day. It’s part of our job to play with these tools and discover new ones.”
Which brings us to “Animal Alerts”, an innovation that utilised data from PetPace dog collars – designed to monitor animal health – to give advance warning of earthquakes in Peru. With the unique powers mentioned earlier, dogs can detect the low vibration of seismic activity hours before humans. This impacts them physically: body heat, heart rate, breathing, pulse.
To add context, Lima is a world capital of tremors, experiencing one almost daily. Early warning can prevent injury, or worse.
Alex says the idea originated in Berlin – a long way from Lima. “Berlin is not often hit by earthquakes, but the creative team there saw a story about how dogs react earlier to earthquakes than the latest technology can. So they wondered – how could we work with animals to predict earthquakes?”
Once the news started to spread, more and more people wanted to join.
Taming the data
It soon evolved into a classic Serviceplan project, with a squad of talented people from at least three countries making it happen. Digital and data experts confirmed that PetPace collars could be used to gather the data required to issue real time alerts. Meanwhile, Berlin-based ECD Myles Lord reached out to Rolando Cordova – the “C” of Serviceplan agency L&C in the States – who was born in Peru. He confirmed that Lima would be the ideal city to trial and benefit from the potentially life-saving idea.
Then came the question of how to equip hundreds of dogs with hi-tech collars. “We knew the owners had to like them, because pet owners are pretty fussy about collars. But Rolando told us not to worry, because this was a huge problem in Peru so everyone would jump on it and try to help.”
The message was spread in the old-fashioned way, with flyers in pet stores and promotion by vets. Serviceplan’s “paw patrol” came together pretty quickly. “We deliberately targeted some dog owners, because we needed to cover a large area. But once the news started to spread, more and more people wanted to join.”
When the earthquake detectives were in place, it was a case of crunching the data, which was collected on the PetPace data cloud. Factors like temperature, weather conditions – dogs also react to thunderstorms or gales – were considered in the blink of an eye, thanks to AI, until the algorithm determined the strong possibility of an earthquake. Alert time.
Smooth coordination
“Then you needed another discipline, which is media,” says Alex. “How do you get the warning out there? But we could do it almost at the touch of a button, sending it out to radio, TV, digital billboards, mobile, web banners…everywhere to get it seen.”
During the trial period, 18 seismic events were detected and nine million residents were alerted in advance. Alex says Serviceplan remains “ambitious” that it can export the technology to other earthquake-prone countries like Japan. Meanwhile, the smooth coordination of the pioneering project was born out of the relationships within the Serviceplan group, he says.
“We all work together as partners. It’s not like one agency in Berlin is calling another in the US, or calling a media agency in Italy. Our people know each other, so they’re all partners within this greater entity. And they all have the common goal pushing out creative, innovative work that is doing good in the world.”