Rennie · McCann London · 2026
For generations, dogs have been blamed for something they didn’t do. Stop the Blame Game turns the familiar excuse of blaming the dog for human wind into a campaign for canine justice, giving the falsely accused victims a voice and Rennie Wind Relief Pro a wonderfully sideways way into an embarrassing problem.
The challenge
Trapped wind is common, but talking about it is awkward. Rennie wanted to launch Wind Relief Pro without falling into the familiar digestive-health conventions of symptoms, diagrams and reassurance — while making a bodily problem people would rather hide feel easy enough to laugh about.
The strategy
McCann looked beyond the person experiencing the problem to someone else affected by it.
The dog.
Humans routinely transfer responsibility for an embarrassing bodily function onto an innocent scapegoat. Rennie simply transfers it back.
By treating dogs as victims of generations of false accusations, the campaign turns an awkward digestive problem into an injustice everyone immediately understands.
The symptom stays the same.
Who gets the blame changes completely.
The execution
Dogs give documentary-style testimony about being falsely accused, while a mock news report covers the growing canine backlash and protest movement.
Celebrity voices including Bill Bailey, Susie Dent, Pete Wicks and Annette Badland give the animals distinct personalities.
The comedy comes from treating an absurdly trivial injustice with complete seriousness.
Rennie barely needs to dramatise trapped wind itself.
Instead, it dramatises the behaviour people use to hide it.
Campaigns That Used Similar Tactics
Transfer the Blame: Redirect an audience that blames someone else onto where responsibility really belongs without lecturing them.
BikerTek — Highways England / adam&eveDDB targeted motorcyclists inclined to blame other road users for crashes. A fake motorcycle-parts brand revealed its apparently high-tech components to be human prosthetics, shifting attention back towards riders’ responsibility for protecting their own bodies.
Don’t Blame the Clothes — Womanity Foundation / JWT confronted victim-blaming by displaying ordinary clothing similar to that worn by sexual-assault survivors. Rather than debating what women wore, the campaign made that inadequacy visible and redirected responsibility to the perpetrator.
Rennie uses the same emotional movement for comedy: the dog has been carrying the blame. Give it back to the human.
Reframe the Roles: Tell the story from the side normally affected by the behaviour rather than the person doing it.
Only The Best For Fred — Budweiser / DDB begins like a sentimental dog-food commercial about a Golden Retriever called Fred. Then the relationship flips: the dog narrates, Fred is the human, and his canine owner rewards his “good boy” with a Budweiser. The pet becomes the carer, and the man becomes the pet. A classic ad with feel-good vibes.
Tactically the same but tonally different...
The Walk — Animallife / Havas Lisbon reversed pet abandonment by having a dog take its owner for a walk, tie him to a post and leave him there. The human experiences the confusion normally imposed on the animal.
Voiceless Women — New Lives / McCann took words written by men about trafficked women and put them into the mouths of the women themselves. The language remained unchanged. Changing who spoke it exposed what those words really meant.
Rennie makes the same move lighter: what if the dog could finally tell us what it thinks about being blamed?
The Question That Could Get You There
Who is getting blamed for a problem that really belongs somewhere else?
