DEFRA
Petfished
You may have heard of ‘Catfishing’, where a stranger creates a fictional online persona to lure someone into a relationship. Deceitful pet sellers use a similar tactic to ‘Petfish’ unsuspecting buyers. These unscrupulous sellers pretend that the puppy or kitten they’re selling you comes from a happy home. In reality, the animal may have been bred or kept in poor conditions.
Challenge
To launch the campaign DEFRA needed a campaign logo that captured the deceitful nature of the term ‘Petfished’. The logo was inspired by Rorschach’s inkblot tests, where often ambiguous images impose a range of deeper meanings to the observer.
At a quick glance the logo portrays a dogs face using the negative space to create a nose ears and eyes. However if you observe the ears/eyes they are subtly made from a pair of hands creating a shadow puppet of a cat. This helps to perpetuate the campaign concept of being ‘Petfished’ (deceived). The logo has then been given a grainy roughened surface texture and deckled edges to give it a distressed finish
Special thanks
Client Department for Environment food and rural affairs
Agency 23Red
Account Manager Emma Palmer Taylor
Designer Sam Marshall