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.

We used “photo tagging”, a standard Facebook feature, to create an innovative, free, and highly effective media channel.

Facebook allows people to put their lives online, and therefore with a simple manipulation of Facebook’s standard features we were able to put the animals we needed to get adopted directly into people’s lives too.

Facebook helped us to easily source photos of our target audience, and allowed us to post ‘photobombed’ images back to the targets’ profile, making them visible to everyone in their social network.

Facebook was the perfect social platform for this campaign as it provides access to people’s photo libraries and allows for easy tagging and sharing. Additionally, we could create profiles for the animals themselves, enabling us to infuse them with personality.

We targeted people with large social followings, as they would be the best people to amplify the campaign and broaden its reach. The copy on the post was tailored to the specific user in order to engage them on an emotional and entertaining level. We also targeted local celebrities and influencers.

Beyond getting these specific animals adopted, our objective was also to raise awareness and support for DARG as an organisation in order to drive long-term consideration.

DARG is a domestic animal rescue shelter in Cape Town. They were over-capacity and needed to find homes for 15 animals in order to make space for new ones.

As DARG is a non-profit organisation, we needed to find an inexpensive way to get these 15 pets adopted as quickly as possible. We decided to do this by showing people how easily these beautiful creatures could fit into everyone’s lives.