Online dog hub Three Million Dogs marked April Fool’s Day with “Fetch by Fetch,” a perfume for pups that smells like poo and other dog’s behinds.
The fictional perfume is described as having the “quiet but sensitive fragrance of poo with notes of fresh mowed grass and just a hint of floral.”
A 30-second commercial, shot in the style of the Calvin Klein “Obsession” ads from the ’90s, was posted on 3milliondogs.com Tuesday. It features dogs frolicking on a beach, while the voiceover says, “Be the dog you really are. Stay. Sit. Smell. Release your inner bitch. Fetch by Fetch. A new ‘poofume’ for dogs.”
Consumers are encouraged to buy the product (which retails for $100) on GoodDogDeals, a price comparison offshoot of Three Million Dogs.
It’s only when people click the “buy now” button they are informed (via a GIF of a very surprised Chihuahua) that the unusual scent doesn’t actually exist.
According to industry veteran Geoffrey Roche, who co-founded Three Million Dogs (formally Dogbook) in 2007 with his son Alexandre, the prank is intended to be as absurd as the idea of doggy perfume.
“Dogs are perfect the way they are. So why would you need a perfume for them?” said Roche. “But if you were to create a perfume, what would that perfume smell like? What do dogs love to smell? They love to smell other dog’s butts, which there’s just no explaining… and it only smells like that to dogs, that’s the technological breakthrough that we had with this perfume.”
Three Million Dogs, which receives 2.5 million pageviews a month, gets the most traffic from the U.S. ( 70%) followed by Canada, the U.K., Australia and the Philippians. It also has more than 660,000 likes on Facebook, and a video posted on March 13 marking “K9 Veteran’s Day” in the U.S., racked up half a million views in four days.
Roche, who envisions the site as a kind of one-stop-shop for dog lovers, added that despite the success of Three Million Dogs, he and his team have a few additions and tweaks in the works to make it bigger and better.
“We have our news and community and we’re adding more and more features as we go forward. I want to do everything possible to make us effectively the CNN of the dog world.”
Roche, who stepped away from the agency he helped create in 2011, said he doesn’t miss the ad game “in the least,” and has been working full-time on the site, along with other projects under the Poolhouse Enterprises banner, a website company he launched in 2007.
The “Fetch by Fetch” spot is also available for viewing on the site’s Facebook page and You Tube. Roche served as writer and creative director on the project and worked with Lauren Piche from editorial company School Editing on the ad. Sound design was handled by RMW.
