"Dallas Pets Alive!" Campaign

The lockdowns in 2020 were extremely stressful to people all across the country, and even the world. Many coped with their feelings of loneliness and isolation by picking up a new friend at the local animal shelter or other rescue group. But as many COVID-19 related restricted ended and as our lives began to return to some sense of normalcy, many of the people that adopted their new pandemic pets began to spend less and less time with them. Some even considered taking their pets back to the rescue group where they got them in the first place.

We didn't want that to happen to any of the defenseless animals that depend on us. So we created an awareness campaign. This campaign would remind people of the reasons why they adopted their new furry friends in the first place, and why taking their new pets back would be devastating to the animals. We decided to focus our campaign on the Dallas area, and based it on a potential partnership with Dallas area charity "Dallas Pets Alive!" This organization does extensive work with pets that need rehoming, and even helps provide resources to people that were thinking about giving up their animals. So because of their experience, we thought "Dallas Pets Alive!" was the perfect organization to base our potential campaign around.

I wrote the manifesto for our campaign. I wanted to create something that would really capture its vision. Something that we could keep close to our hearts as we created each piece of content. I wanted us to remember that we were doing this for the pets that love us unconditionally.

When I wrote the copy for this ad, I wanted the reader to imagine how devastating it would be for be for the dogs that became new members of the family during the pandemic to be returned to a shelter as soon as their new human grew tired of them. I wanted them to consider how much love the pup had given their new family, and how heartbroken they would be to be returned to the shelter. As the tagline we used said I wanted people to "Think before you take them back."

I decided to write copy for this ad that played off the common idea of cats are so independent that they don't really need or care about human friendship. Many people believe that because cats are so independent, then it is no big deal to leave them on the side of the road, or abandon them at the shelter. I wanted to show through this ad that cats can need their humans just as much as dogs, and become just as attached. Just as with the previous ad, I wanted people to keep the tagline "Think before you take them back," in mind.

I wanted the copy for this third print ad to sum up the ideas in the past two. I wanted it to show readers that the new pets they got during the pandemic were members of their family. And family members shouldn't be abandoned when life gets hard. 

I wrote the script for a potential 60 second radio spot, that our team thought would be a great idea to create for "Dallas Pets Alive!" This spot would air on radio stations local to the Dallas area. The ad features two dogs playing in a dog park. One of the dogs is worried about his human returning him to the animal shelter. His doggy friend tells him about all the resources "Dallas Pets Alive!" can provide his human, so that his human won't have to give him up. In addition to writing the script, I also starred in our spot as both one of the dogs, and the radio announcer.

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