Town Cracks Down on Unscooped Dog Poop By Mailing It Back to Owners
In a creative twist on the old "dog poop on the porch" gag, one small town has been scooping up abandoned canine excrement and shipping it back to the dog owners who failed to pick it up.
The Madrid-adjacent municipality of Brunete teamed up with venerable ad agency McCann Erickson to launch a campaign aimed at reducing the amount of dog poop found in the town's streets.
The stunt involved sending out volunteers to spot irresponsible dog owners and engage them in light conversation so as to determine their dog's name and breed.
"With the name of the dog and the breed it was possible to identify the owner from the registered pet database held in the town hall," a spokesman for the town council is quoted as saying.
The uncollected "caca" would then be scooped up and placed in a box marked "lost property" and shipped express back to its rightful owner.
The campaign not only helped reduce the quantity of unclaimed dog crap by 70 percent, it also won McCann the Silver Sun award at last weekend's Latin American Festival of Advertising Communication.
