Case Study: How Forfurs leveraged social media to create awareness around pet adoption

With the help of influencers, Forfurs launched its 'Adopt Don't Shop' initiative to provide homes for stray animals.

This case study explores how Forfors involved influencers and the masses to educate the masses about the animals that need a home, encourage them to adopt pets as opposed to buying them.

Category Introduction

The ‘Pet Care’ market is expanding in India at a steady rate, as of today. It is expected to grow at 14% annually to become a $490 million (₹33000 million) market by 2022. Forfurs specifically caters to pet accessories as of today.

Brand Introduction

Forfurs, as a brand intends to be like a mix of luxury and comfort. The brand promotes the idea of being comfortable in style and curates accessories in a variety of fabrics with different colors.

Besides accessories for cats and dogs, the brand also specialises in bridles and halters for the equestrian market.

Agency

Trivium Public Relations

Summary

To put the idea forward and spread awareness towards Pet Adoption, Forfurs’ initiated a campaign, #AdoptDontShop. The initiative urges people to come forth and tell the world the story of how they met their furry friends.

View this post on Instagram

A post shared by Forfurs (@forfursofficial)

The aim of the initiative was to sensitize society towards adoptive pets including stray animals, who deserve a loving family and a home. The campaign was a means to bring about a change by spreading the word and highlighting the plight of shelter animals to promote their adoption.

Problem Statement/Objective

The main objective was to create awareness amongst animal lovers who are looking forward to adding a new member to their family. There are countless stray animals. Instead of buying pets and purchasing from the breeders, the campaign focused on providing a roof over the heads of the stray animals who deserve nothing but love.

Brief

The agency was briefed on promoting the cause in the form of a campaign, where the prime focus should be the objective of creating awareness while reaching the masses, who are animal lovers and are contemplating between the idea of ‘Adoption’ or ‘Shop’.

The agency proceeded to organically engage with influencers, influential individuals, as well as the masses to carry their objective and goal to their audience.

Creative Idea

The participants needed to create content in a dynamic way while adding real-life examples to the idea for awareness on the topic.

While providing their audience with a story and the importance of adopting animals, influencers carved an emotional connect with their followers.

Challenges

The challenge was to reach out to few influencers and bloggers who could promote the cause and live by it in real life, as well.

Identifying the right carriers of the brand's message was the real task, as Forfurs felt the need for brand-influencer resonance in the right sense.

Also read: Case study: How Cinthol ‘s online travel community enabled the brand’s content campaign

Execution

People from all over the country sent in their stories about how they first met their pets, whom they proceeded to adopt. With giveaways for the best stories sent, ForFurs chose the most inspirational stories sent by their followers for 'Adopt Don't Shop' campaign.

To become a part of the initiative and getting a chance to be one of the 4 winners, each participant had to follow the below steps:

• Follow Forfur's official page
• Share the adoption story of their adorable pet with the brand
• Share a Pawwful picture of the owner and their pet

View this post on Instagram

A post shared by Forfurs (@forfursofficial)

Various influencers also participated in the #AdoptDontShop campaign to share their stories of adoption and their thrill to promote awareness about the cause of adopting animals that need a loving home.

The Influencers and Pet Parents who participated in this campaign included

Shweta Sharma, Simran Khindri, Anandita or snowy_lizzie, Yuvika Abrol, Shreya or 19frames, amongst many others.

This campaign was run on Instagram with the support of influencers, influential individuals, as well as the masses.

The Ads were placed on both Instagram and Facebook for Stories and Reach.

Results

• Feed Reach -177,439
• Feed Impression -191,289
• Story Reach - 414,082
• Story Impression - 414,082

Quotes

"There is a dearth of awareness among people who prefer to buy a dog rather than adopt. By adopting, you’re giving a dog another chance at life. After spending time at the shelter, you may fall in love with a completely different dog to the one you thought you wanted. This campaign is an initiative to bring awareness among people who might be thinking of getting a pet in near future", said, Vanya Chandel, Founder, ForFurs.

"At the beginning of the campaign, seeing the traction on the Adopt, Don’t Shop hashtag, we felt the understanding of the same may be extremely niche and limited in our country. However, once the initiation commenced, we realized that individuals felt extremely strongly about the cause, which is why we were able to garner a great reach from a relatively shorter campaign period. The way we witnessed individuals urging one another to stray away from buying, and adopt their pets instead was beautiful," said, Mehar Malhotra, Creative Director, Trivium Media Group