We ‘photobombed’ people with pictures of the dogs that we wanted them to adopt. We digitally edited the animals into people’s Facebook photos, re-uploaded the photobombs to Facebook, and tagged the unsuspecting person in the edited photo.

Amusing copy accompanied the post to give people a sense of the animal’s personality and create an emotional connection. These posts were designed to maximise share-ability and viral potential so people would be compelled to spread the campaign organically.

We created Facebook profiles for the animals, then edited them into photos that we found on our targets’ Facebook profiles. The photos were tagged and shared with a message conveying the animal’s unique personality, describing how easily and happily it could fit into that person’s life.

‘Photobombed’ users would then receive a notification that they had been tagged in a photo. As they checked the notification, they would see a familiar photo of themselves, but accompanied by a dog they had never met. This would then prompt them to follow the post to the dog’s profile to learn more about this animal and how it ended up in their photo.

Most of the users shared the posts and many in their social network also engaged positively. As more Photobombs were posted, the pet’s social network grew organically and we were able to target more people.

With zero media budget we were able to get over half of the pets adopted, making space for more homeless animals.

We also greatly increased online awareness and engagement including a 243% increase in DARG Facebook page engagement, and a 53.8% increase in DARG Facebook page views. We also generated a 65% increase in average daily impressions and a 321% increase in average daily engaged users.