In Costa Rica there are hundreds of stray animals rescuers, they pull dogs and cats off the streets and place them on Facebook and Instagram where they can find a forever home for them.

Rescuers have little knowledge of social media, photography or marketing, making the content they generate very low quality: photos out of frame, out of focus, poor copys, no comments and not a single share. With this kind of content their animales will never be adopted.

Universidad Hispanoamericana together with Territorio de Zaguates (the biggest shelter for stray dogs in the world) created, Social Marketing for Animal Rescuers. A free online course designed for Rescuers to learn valuable marketing tools that will help them find a home for the animals they rescue.

The problem was spotted by Territorio de Zaguates thanks to the direct contact they have with animal rescuers, to whom hunting a house for a rescued animal is not easy. After a lot of analysis and conversations they came to the conclusion that one of the strongest reasons this happens is because of the very little appealing content they generated for every animal.

This peculiar problem led to a very specific target: independent animal rescuers and shelters, and they where all invited to take the first social marketing for animal rescuers course.

The totality of the course was a co-creation between Territorio de Zaguates and Universidad Hispanoamericana of Costa Rica which led to a very academic and serious approach to the subject.

Social Marketing for Animal Rescuers is an online course with 6 classes (http://rescatistas.uh.ac.cr/), each one taught by an expert in the subject: Art Direction, with the director of the highest sold box office movie in the history of Costa Rica; Copywriting, with an award-winning Creative Director in Cannes Lions; Animal Photography with Smartphone, with 2 professional animal photographers specialized in cats and dogs; Social Media, with With the Digital Marketing Director for Toyota; Animal Heatlh and Wellness, with a top veterinary influencer that specializes in the topic; and Public Relations, with the founder of Territorio de Zaguates.

The course is available for free on the Universidad Hispanoamericana website and was released on the social media channels of Universidad Hispanoamericana, Territorio de Zaguates and each of the professors that would participate. In addition, the idea had a PR campaign on different mass media channels such as radio and press.

The course has been taken by more than 500 rescuers, making their adoption process almost 20 times quicker. This has also helped them transform their content into something more likeable, shareable, and most important of all: adoptable.