Update: This story was edited on 9:20 a.m., Feb. 2 to include comments given by WeatherTech CEO David MacNeil on Saturday, Feb. 1.
BOLINGBROOK, IL — Scout is a very lucky 7-year-old golden retriever. Like many dogs of the breed, he suffered from cancer as he approached canine middle age, and veterinarians initially estimated he had only about a 1 percent chance for survival. He’s still around and kicking thanks to the efforts of professionals at the University of Wisconsin-Madison’s School of Veterinary Medicine.
“Scout collapsed back in July with blood bleeding out of a large tumor on the side of his heart… The doctor said ‘look, he’s got this tumor, we can’t fix it, might as well keep the dog from from suffering and put him down,’ and I’m like, I’m not putting this dog down,” Scout’s owner Dave MacNeil, CEO of the Bolingbrook-based auto accessory company WeatherTech, said, describing trips to local animal hospitals.
When local animal ERs couldn’t help Scout, MacNeil said he instead took Scout to UW-Madison’s veterinary hospital.
“We were just a no-appointment walk in patient; greeted professionally, quickly,” MacNeil said. “They diagnosed what was going on and we came up with… an aggressive plan to try and save [Scout’s] life.”
Their methods for treating Scout’s malignant heart tumor last summer included chemotherapy and radiation therapy, and MacNeil said the tumor is now much smaller than it once was.
“Within six weeks his tumor had shrunk 78 percent, two weeks after that it was down another 50 percent,” he said.
In thanks for helping Scout beat the odds, MacNeil made a large lump sum donation to the veterinary school, and funded the production of a $6 million+ ad for its benefit. It will air coast-to-coast during Super Bowl LIV on Sunday.
“It’s very common for clients to bring their animals to our hospital and ultimately want to figure out a way to give back,” UW-Madison Veterinary School Dean Dr. Mark Markel said. “What’s very uncommon is someone that has David’s capacity to do that… this is something that has never happened, I think, in higher education. Certainly never in a veterinary medicine school.”
The commercial was produced by Pinnacle Advertising, a small ad production agency in Schaumburg. MacNeil said he has made use Pinnacle’s services for about a decade.
“They’ve been my advertising agency for ten years… my previous six Super Bowl commercials were also done by Pinnacle. It’s just a regular thing that we do once a year,” MacNeil said.
Though Markel said an ad of this size will be a first for the university, it will not be the first time Scout has appeared in a Super Bowl commercial as a mascot for WeatherTech. The company’s 2019 Big Game ad — one of six WeatherTech has aired — also featured the dog. In that ad, Scout explored the WeatherTech factory floor as workers assembled parts around him.
It is also not the first time MacNeil has made some eccentric choices with his extreme wealth. In 2018 he reportedly spent between $70M and $80M on a 1963 Ferrari 250 GTO, and more recently purchased a $23M ‘equestrian estate’ in Florida. He also reportedly owns several aircraft and luxury yachts. This taken into account, $6M is a relatively small amount of money for MacNeil to spend.
MacNeil said he chose to fund the ad, instead of making another large lump-sum donation, in the hopes that an advertisement would ultimately generate more money for the veterinary school than whatever lump-sum MacNeil would give them.
“It’s kind of like playing roulette, right? You put the money down and if it hits, you get 36 – 1. So we’re hoping to leverage my investment into much larger donations, for one,” he said.
MacNeil added that he hoped the ad would make people more aware of the reality of canine cancer.
“Two, this gives us a platform to let the whole world know… that cancer in canines is a serious issue. There are people out there that don’t even know dogs get cancer,” he said.
Regardless of the specifics, Markel said he was happy that millions of dollars were being dedicated to advertising the school.
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“We have some very supportive friends of the school, we’ve raised about $120 million over the last seven years… so we do have some substantial donors,” he said. “But certainly never anything like this.”
Markel also said that school officials have proactively earmarked the donations they plan to receive for various projects and research efforts. What they are able to fund will depend on the amount of money people send in. Some of the projects, Markel said, could benefit humans as well as their animal companions.
“We have kind of a list of things depending on whether this all raises $10,000 or $10 million. The list will obviously be modified depending on what is raised,” Markel said. “All of it will either be in support of the care of animals with cancer or research to support developing better therapies for cancer in animals… the research that we do benefits not only animals with cancer but also benefits humans with cancer too.”
When asked, MacNeil did not comment on whether he donated or planned to donate any money to the University of Wisconisn at Madison’s (Human) Medical Center, which also conducts cancer research for humans. He said he considered the question inappropriate.
“I am disregarding your question; I don’t think it’s appropriate… what I plan to do in the future, that’s my business,” MacNeil said.
Since the media first found out about Scout’s big ad, major news outlets across the country have been running stories about the dog, MacNeil and the novelty of a multi-millionaire purchasing a multi-million dollar commercial for the benefit of a veterinary school. Markel, for his part, just said he hopes the money will help UW-Madison’s veterinary students and staff continue to grow in their practice.
“What we in veterinary medicine are trying to do is create new strategies to benefit animal health,” he said, “and a lot of the things we do, as I said earlier, benefit human health… all of us are going to benefit from this, by getting this message out.”
To donate to UW-Madison’s School of Veterinary Medicine, visit this link on WeatherTech’s website.