We challenged the misperceptions by providing examples of shelter pets that are perfect, healthy and happy. Pets that everyone knows and loves.

The most famous dogs and cats today aren’t coming from Hollywood; they’re coming from the internet. Videos of dogs and cats can have millions of views. There are pets with millions of fans, followers and likes. Today, there are cat film festivals, pet agents and celebrity pet products. Many of these celebrity pets started as shelter pets.

The tagline for the campaign was “Start a story – adopt.” We wanted to use the stories of celebrity pets and influencers to encourage people to tell their shelter pet adoption stories and create awareness and a movement toward adopting shelter pets.

We began the campaign featuring the stories of our three celebrity pets: Keyboard Cat (8+ million views on YouTube), Toast (325k+ followers on Instagram), and Hamilton (82k+ followers on Instagram). Films ran as PSA's on TV and in social channels. We also created print, radio, OOH and digital banners. The campaign has achieved over 100,000,000 impressions to date.

That was only the beginning. We leveraged the social media channels of over 70 cause supporters, both pets and humans, to support the campaign by telling their story of adopting a shelter pet. And at every touchpoint we encouraged people to share their stories in social media with hashtag #startastoryadopt.

Through the campaign we’ve helped build social cachet around shelter pet adoption. We’re replacing the image of shelter pets as damaged and unwanted with the understanding that these amazing pets are a perfect fit for adopters and their families.

The campaign has dramatically increased engagement in social media and +64% growth in the volume of interactions on Instagram, the primary social channel for the campaign (vs. Q4 2015).

The campaign has already started to make an impact on preference for obtaining a pet. More visitors coming to ShelterPetProject.org have a high intention to adopt:

• +80% in visits looking to find a shelter in Q1 2016 (vs. Q1 2015)

• +82% in visits searching for a pet to adopt in Q1 2016 (vs. Q1 2015)