CIBA Animal Health: Program

When Earle Palmer Brown/NY's creative team of John Fraioli and Robin Tzannes had to come up with a different approach to sell Ciba Animal Health's new treatment to control fleas in dogs and cats, they began to think of animation as an interesting alternative. With animation, their pet protagonists could talk and express their fears.

And the team wanted the central characters, a dog named Henry and a cat named Molly, to be both lovable and sympathetic - for the pet owner to put themselves in their pet's position of fearing what sort of torture this new flea control product would produce. They picked Norm Bendell, noted humorous illustrator, to design Henry and Molly and their owner because of his sophisticated and funny style. Buzzco Associates was chosen, not only because of their breadth of experience, but also because they had worked with Norm on other projects for Southwestern Bell, ClearBlue Easy, Xerox, Budget Gourmet, and ABC/Capital Cities.

There were 5 spots, Henry's Nightmare, Acrobatics, Double Nightmare, Summer Dreams and Through the Fence.

At the same time, the B2B advertising wanted to keep the branding and added a little music video to their sales film It's Hard to Harm a Flea.

These ads were wildly successful and won Effies two years in a row. But, unfortunately, Ciba was sold to another manufacturer and the campaign was scrapped!