Making pet welfare a Gen Z trend: Battersea’s Cost of Cute PR Campaign

Battersea partnered with Leopard to raise awareness of the animal welfare issues associated with extreme breeding in dogs and cats, a trend amplified by social media. The charity had already launched Cost of Cute, a creative campaign highlighting the hidden health consequences behind exaggerated features such as flat faces, folded ears and excessive skin folds. The next step was to take that message beyond the campaign’s existing channels of the campaign and reach the Gen Z and Millennial audiences, helping shape pet trends online.

Leopard developed an earned-first, behaviour-change PR campaign designed to make healthy pets the trend worth following. By bringing together fashion, celebrity voices and social influence, we gave audiences a fresh way into a serious issue, and created moments designed to travel across media, social platforms and real life.

Challenge

Extreme breeding can be made to look desirable through images and trends shared online, while the associated health consequences may be less visible. Battersea needed to interrupt that cycle and encourage people to think differently about what makes a pet cute and healthy.

The challenge was to turn an important animal welfare message into a campaign that would cut through a crowded cultural conversation. It needed to feel relevant to Gen Z and Millennials, give media a compelling story to cover and encourage people to reconsider the choices and behaviours that can support unhealthy breeding trends.

PR and media relations

To bring the Cost of Cute message to life, we created a fashion drop designed to spark conversations about pet welfare. Working with six well-known Gen Z and Millennial personalities, Yasmin Pettet, Max Balegde, Tasha Ghouri, Faye Winter, Pandora Christie and Vicky Pattison, we developed an on-trend collecInfluencer marketingtion featuring slogans including “Hot girls just want healthy pets” and “Cute but struggling”. 

A high-fashion editorial photoshoot placed our celebrity talent centre stage alongside healthy dogs, giving the collection a distinctive visual identity and creating a compelling story for the media.

We then delivered proactive PR outreach across national, broadcast, showbiz, lifestyle, regional and podcast media, facilitating interviews with the campaign talent and building momentum around the launch. Throughout the summer, we created multiple media opportunities to keep the conversation going and bring Battersea’s animal welfare message to new audiences.

The campaign also moved beyond traditional media with a pop-up shop at Battersea Power Station. This gave the public the opportunity to experience the collection, engage with the Cost of Cute campaign and sign a pledge to put healthy pets above all else.

Influencer marketing

To extend the campaign’s reach beyond traditional media, we combined celebrity advocacy with targeted influencer marketing. We identified relevant fashion and lifestyle creators and used targeted outreach and gifting to put the campaign’s slogan-led pieces in their hands.

Alongside this activity, we briefed our six campaign ambassadors to share the collection across their own social media channels. By tapping into the audiences and influence of established personalities and relevant creators, we helped take the healthy-pets message into the online spaces where trends and perceptions are shaped.

This approach gave the campaign multiple routes to reach Gen Z and Millennial audiences, encouraging conversation around responsible pet welfare and helping challenge the idea that extreme physical characteristics are what make a pet cute.