Organization: Iams, Helen Woodward Animal Center
Agency: PainePR
Timeframe: 2008-2009
There are as many as 8 million homeless pets in the United States, and of those, as many as 4 million dogs and cats are euthanized each year due to overcrowding in shelters and lack of awareness about pet adoption.
To increase awareness about pets in shelters, the Helen Woodward Animal Center (HWAC) teamed up with Procter & Gamble Pet Care’s flagship Iams brand over 10 years ago to launch Iams Home 4 the Holidays (IH4TH), a global pet adoption initiative. Since then the IH4TH network has grown to include more than 3,500 pet adoption centers and has helped more than 3 million families adopt pets.
For its late 2008 IH4TH campaign, P&G wanted to elevate the Iams cause program to help make a bigger impact on the lives of homeless animals through a holistic effort. The collective team of PainePR (PPR)/Iams/HWAC defined strategies to leverage existing assets, arm animal organizations with materials to promote their adoption efforts and create ways to mobilize Iams loyalists to spread the word about saving the lives of orphaned pets.
 |
| Actress Felicity Huffman (shown here with her adopted dog, Tucker) served as a spokesperson for the Iams Home 4 the Holidays pet adoption initiative. Photo courtesy of PainePR |
FIGHTING SCARE TACTICS
But based on history, PPR knew they had several challenges that needed to be addressed:
• A lack of success in securing media coverage;
• Combating the negative perception consumers had about pets in shelters;
• Fighting scare tactics from animal activists; and,
• The lack of a budget that could finance traditional TV advertising or in-store collateral.
To overcome these challenges, the team hammered out a list of goals they wanted to meet for the new campaign. They were as follows:
• Ensure at least 1 million pets were adopted during the three-month campaign;
• Reach consumers through national media placements featuring the celebrity spokesperson, including a national broadcast placement to kick off the campaign and generate at least 350 million media impressions;
• Leverage online influencers through editorial coverage and conversations; and
• Drive traffic to IH4TH.com.
STRONG CELEBRITY
The target audiences for IH4TH included: first-time pet owners adopting animals from a shelter and experienced pet owners planning to adopt from an animal shelter/rescue.
To give the campaign a well-known face that could drive much-needed publicity and awareness about pet adoption while giving it a relevant hook that would attract media attention, PPR secured TV and film actress Felicity Huffman to act as the celebrity spokesperson. Iams spokesperson Kris Parlett says that Huffman was chosen following extensive research using the following criteria: Does this person adopt pets? Do they have stories about their pet adoptions? And to make them more attractive to media, what are their current and future projects (i.e. movies being released)?
The team concluded that Huffman could reach the target audience through her own pet adoption story. Besides briefing Huffman in the messaging she should convey in all of her media interviews, the team arranged for a photo shoot with Huffman and her adopted dog, Tucker, to use in all media, online and marketing materials, as well as a behind-the-scenes B-roll package. And in addition to providing voiceovers for broadcast PSAs (which had a call-to-action that drove audiences to IH4TH.com), Huffman wrote a personal note that was included in the educational kits each family that adopted a pet received.
A two-day national broadcast media tour was coordinated for Huffman. Segments would deliver a mix of live and taped appearances, so coverage would be sustained throughout the campaign. Kicking it off was the appearance of Huffman and her pet on The Oprah Winfrey Show. Because Huffman has appeared on the iconic TV talk show host’s program before and is well known to the public thanks to her ongoing role in the ABC hit Desperate Housewives, the team had no problem securing a coveted spot for the actress and her dog on Oprah’s couch. Fortunately, she proved to be to be a good fit to promote the program as a spokesperson.
“Felicity rose to the top—she was all in,” says Parlett. “When you work with a celebrity, you work with their team. Often, by the time a request gets to that celebrity, it takes on a whole different meaning and gets more complex. But with Felicity, she was flexible and wanted to make a difference, and she did.”
DIGITAL DIFFERENCE
The team also worked on securing national print coverage to run prior to the kickoff event. Media kits were developed that included key messaging, Q&A, program fact sheet, bios, kickoff release and final adoption results release.
To reach out to shelters, the team created a “IH4TH How to Guide”—to help shelters market their participation in IH4TH with local media. The guide, in an easy-to-use CD format, included helpful information ranging from template media materials to step-by-step checklists for executing an event.
Digital was also heavily leveraged. “We knew that people who might want to adopt a pet would go online,” says Shannon Suggett, a director at PPR who works on the Iams account. “So we wanted to have a strong online program that would have a lot of content that would help people make a decision about adopting a pet.”
PPR’s sister agency Rocket XL launched an online influencer campaign to build buzz among the pet blogger community. The team targeted 250 important bloggers to spread the word about IH4TH and pet adoption. The team also developed a page that would serve as a tool for bloggers to drag and drop video, photos, logos, adoption tips and more onto their own sites.
BIG MEDIA BITE
Based on the results, the campaign more than surpassed its goals. A total of 1.2 million pets were adopted through IH4TH Oct. 1, 2008, to Jan. 5, 2009; the program goal was exceeded by 20%. Key media coverage included the aforementioned segment on The Oprah Winfrey Show, which aired to more than 9 million-plus viewers, as well as placements in Parade, The View, Live with Regis & Kelly, Today, People, Us Weekly and InTouch. Radio PSAs generated 102 million media impressions while TV PSAs reached 14.8 million viewers.
The digital outreach was also impressive. In just three months, there were 953,345 unique impressions from influencer posts and 642,890 sites linking in. Plus, the day the Oprah Winfrey segment aired, IH4TH.com experienced record traffic, causing a temporary shutdown of their servers.
BUDGET & RESOURCES
The budget for the campaign was well over $600,000. According to Suggett, that included everything from researching a celebrity’s relevance to act as the campaign’s spokesperson to media relations to creative ideation—the entire scope and breadth of the program. The budget did not include, however, celebrity fees, which were paid by P&G.
At Iams, Parlett says an average of four people (including himself) worked on the program 10 hours a week from the campaign launch to its completion. The number of employees and time spent per week was similar for the Helen Woodward Animal Center.
For PPR, at the campaign’s peak, there were nine staffers who worked on the campaign, but four from the core team (including Suggett) worked on it from the launch to the end. The amount of time that staffers devoted to the effort was significant, says Suggett.
PET PASSION
Parlett feels what set this program apart from other PR initiatives was the passion that its team members have for pets and “the true difference each adoption makes.”
Mike Arms, founder of IH4TH campaign and president of Helen Woodward Animal Center, says: “The success we’ve had with impacting the lives of millions of pets and people shows we’re winning the fight to raise the awareness about pet adoption around the world, so there’s no challenge we can’t overcome.” PRN
CONTACT:
Kris Parlett, [email protected], Shannon Suggett, [email protected].