For this campaign we are pairing Homeward Animal Shelter and Pet Co. Homeward Animal Shelter is a local non-profit organization that takes in cats and dogs and finds them a good home. Pet Co. has switched where they source their adoption animals. From backlash of puppy-mills, they have switched to collaborating with local shelters to host animals there. With more people stuck at home and some struggling to be alone so long, Pet Co. has recognized there is a possible demand for more people to become pet owners.
Realistically, Pet Co. does not benefit monetarily much from the adoption of their pets, the real benefit is creating a positive relationship with the new owners and attracting repeat customers. With the adoption, Pet Co. often likes to “keep in touch” with the new families. This not only builds the relationship between consumer and brand, but doubles as top of mind advertising.
Homeward Animal Shelters main goal is to give animals to loving and caring families. Their relationship with Pet Co. has been great from the start. They adhere to Homewards strict background checks to ensure animals are going to good homes. With both companies positively benefiting from working together, Pet Co. has proposed a parade of animals to get people excited and adopting. Since Covid has many people at home, Pet co. is going to give them something to watch! The event will be pre-promoted by sending out information to their local customers from their saved mailing list. Since many customers are already pet owners, Pet Co has promoted the event through Facebook ads and other local options such as radio ads and even segments on local news to attract a larger target market. In essence, the parade is going to be streamed on all large streamable platforms (facebook, Instagram, youtube, twitch, twitter etc.) where they walk dogs around down a strip and talk about their personalities and why you might want to adopt them (information is provided by the shelter who already has this information listed on their website). They also mix in promotional items by having dogs play with their store brand toys, eat promoted food, or cats sleeping on cat towers that they can buy at the store.
Homeward animal shelter will also promote the event on their media platforms in support of the event. It is important to note that their relationship is symbiotic with Pet Co. providing marketing and a larger platform to adopt out animals and receives good publicity and customer interaction.
The event will take an educational standpoint, for people to watch the event and learn about the important issue of lost animals and the benefits of adoption. With Fargo Homeward Animal Shelter and Pet Co. partnering together, the event will have professionals from the organization involved, increasing consumer reliability. By hosting an educational based event, more knowledge and insight will be able to create more opportunities for audience members to adopt. This event will also increase the reputational standpoint for Homeward Animal Shelter, as they will collaborate with the widely known company who already has affiliations and understanding with animal adoption. Pet Co. customers already have an interest in animals, and this partnership and event can increase business with shedding more light on the shelter.
For this event, persuasion outcomes can be based on emotional appeal because we can target it from a social issue point of view. We want to educate society on what shelters are for and why animals need a home. Another persuasion tactic for the event is to acknowledge that we are in the midst of a pandemic, where a lot of us can feel alone and a pet can help to make life more fun and enjoyable during this tough time. Overall, we want to provide the information, address the buying experience and build new relationships through the hierarchy pyramid of needs. Our hopeful persuasion outcome will be to reach the “psychological needs,” where adopting a pet can fulfill the belongingness factor of relationships and the “esteem needs” of feeling accomplished. Raising knowledge and education about the Homeward Animal Shelter would target people’s emotions to where they will want to feel successful in their psychological and esteem needs. In addition, to target the audience’s mode of decision making, we can classify it as extended problem solving, with low experience but high involvement. We understand that people may have never adopted an animal before and don’t have the experience, but we can express how important their involvement is when they do adopt from Homeward.
When it comes to examining the legal and ethical concerns of this event, it tends to lean more subjective. Ethically some may look at the relationship between Pet Co and Homeward and feel that it is sleazy trying to exploit animals in need for a sale with Pet Co. However, this is a small minority that may feel this way. In general it is looked to favorably as a good act. Legally there are two problems that they could come across. The first is respecting Covid rules. This is easily subverted by having the parade online so people don’t gather in crowds to see the event. Another legal/ethical problem would be ensuring that the people adopting the pets are responsible, getting background checks done and ensuring that they can properly take care of the pet. This is remedied as long as Pet Co. ad here's to Homewards practice for ensuring quality owners.
Comments