Lyka is a D2C challenger making fresh, vet-formulated dog food in a category where most owners haven’t reconsidered what they feed their dog in years. The task was to move dog owners from passive awareness to active consideration, with the same acquisition-cost discipline as performance media. The audience: dog owners who had come to accept a bad poo as just another part of dog ownership, led by Millennial dog mums.

Big Kibble plays it safe with cute dogs in slow motion. Lyka went the other way, putting its biggest-ever brand investment behind an idea no pet brand would touch. The Brutal Pick-Up turned the everyday dread of a bad poo into a horror movie, launched around Halloween to own a cultural moment. The aim wasn’t to sell a product. It was to change what a “bad poo” meant, and make Lyka the brand dog owners think of when it happens.

Alchemy One led the media strategy, planning and buying, building Lyka’s widest-ever channel mix around high-attention, emotionally immersive environments: the big screen, living rooms, ears and the footpath itself. Media planned to make people feel something, at a scale nobody in pet food had gone near.

Cinema, VOD, audio and horror-movie-style posters along dog-walking routes met dog owners exactly where the horror happens, supported by TV, radio, OOH and social.

The impact outlasted Halloween: the campaign stayed in market through April 2026, proving to Lyka that brand work can carry an acquisition number.

Across a four-year partnership, Lyka has averaged +14% awareness growth a year among Australians aged 25–64. Brand building, turning into commercial growth.

The Brutal Pick-Up was named a B&T Awards 2026 finalist for Best Integrated Ad Campaign and Data-Driven Marketing.

Client: Lyka
Media: Alchemy One
Creative: OUTSIDE IN
Production: DIVISION