Pet adoption over mass-production: A social IMC campaign for PAWS

For more than 50 years, the Philippine Animal Welfare Society or famously known as PAWS, a non-profit organization, has been saving and helping abondoned, neglected and mistreated animals by medically treating them, rehabilitating them, giving them love and affection and more importantly giving them justice for all the pain and suffering they have been through. As reports on animal abuse and cruelty cases such us meat trade, dog fights, or just plainly hurting an animal continue to arise, it is only expected that the animal rescues admitted in shelters will increase as well, hence, more facilities are needed to accommodate and to treat these victims and eventually put them up for adoption to be given a second life in the arms of a loving human. Unfortunately, that is not always the case as animals admitted in the shelters usually stay there for a long period of time, waiting to be adopted out for the reason that people would usually go for buying purebred animals from pet shops. In 2007, PAWS has released the See Beauty Behind Breed campaign to uplift the image of native dogs and cats from askal to aspin, pusakal to puspin and encourage the people to adopt these animals. The aim of this social marketing communication plan is to expose an ugly industry behind the suppliers of pet stores, online pet stores and other animal retailers, which are known as puppy mills or simply, irresponsible breeders. In effect, the campaign seeks to re-introduce and reinforce among the people the idea of choosing adoption from animal shelters and veer them away from buying from pet stores. This plan seeks to educate and inform them about what the organization does to rehabilitate these abused animals to qualify for adoption against the lives of the animals being bred continuously without necessary care just to gain profit. As a result, this plan will inspire and encourage the audience to consider adopting an animal from the shelter instead of buying from pet stores. The proposed budget of Php 4M will be utilized for the development of the Audio Visual Presentation in the form an infographic video for flexibility of usage and it will eventually be translated to a public service announcement, out-of-home, digital activities and event. The campaign will run from April to October 2013. During the evaluation phase, several online system reports will be employed during and after the campaign to monitor ad performances. Moroever, adoption rates from the shelter will also be part of the campaign post-report to validate if the campaign was a success and if objectives are met