Auburn Animal Rescue- PR Plan

Part 1

Description of Project

A local humane society, Auburn Animal Rescue, would like new ideas for an event to increase puppy adoptions. The event should focus a spotlight on the influx of litters of puppies the organization sees during warm weather months. It’s not unusual for the shelter to see as many as 200 animals enter the facility each week. The shelter has approximately 24 kennel dogs, about 20 puppies and 15 cats, she said. Puppy adopters that arrange to have a pediatric spay or neuter surgery will receive a discounted adoption fee of $40. Your client wants fresh ideas to get people to the event and to increase adoptions. What will you do to engage your public while making your ideas standout against those of other organizations with similar missions?

Research Plan

For our formative research, we will conduct internal research with the founder of Auburn Animal Rescue to develop an understanding about the local humane society’s history, mission statement and values. We will also do research on the organization’s past events within the last year and the level of involvement from Auburn residents. Next, we would conduct research on the demographics and psychographics of Auburn residents who adopted pets and what kind of pets they adopted. We will conduct secondary research on other local animal shelters to see what they are doing in terms of events and adoption rates so we can see what competitors are and have done. Lastly, we will conduct quantitative research on the primary public and/or employees by doing surveys or interviews to learn about their views on the Auburn Animal Rescue organization itself, its events, and its community involvement. Our research approach is impressive because it is organized, and it will give our team the information we need to attract the desired publics for the event.

Target Public

For demographics, Auburn Animal Rescue will be targeting Auburn residents as well as residents of surrounding areas such as Opelika. The 2018 Census showed that Auburn had a population of 63k residents (“Auburn City, Alabama”). The City of Opelika had a population of 29.8k residents (“Opelika City, Alabama”). Therefore, our event for Auburn Animal Rescue could reach up to at least 92.8k people in just the Auburn-Opelika area. The US census also showed that there were approximately 35.4k households in the Auburn-Opelika area. According to the APPA National Pet Owners Survey, 63.4% of U.S. households own or will own at least one dog (“Pet Industry Market Size & Ownership Statistics”). With that being said, it is safe to assume that our event will hopefully reach approximately 58,835 people in the Auburn-Opelika area and persuade them to adopt a puppy from the influx of liters during warmer months.

For psychographics, Auburn Animal Hospital also hopes to target those who are puppy lovers. By reaching this audience we could potentially reach up to 1.6 million people based off of the information found by ASPCA when they concluded how many dogs were adopted in the United States in 2018. We plan to also target those who value happiness. The GSS is a social research organization at the University of Chicago that discovered twice as many people with dogs report being “very happy” compared to those who have a pet other than a dog or no pets at all. Finally, we plan to target those who believe that dogs are a human’s best friend. By doing this we would be able to have individuals who are not related to the project to express their personal unbiased opinions and experiences about their puppy pals with hopes of encouraging others who feel a lack of this presence in their lives to want to adopt their new puppy pal as soon as possible.

Goal

To increase the adoption rate of puppies during warm weather months.

Key Message

Adopt to Warm Your Heart

Works Cited

“Auburn City, Alabama.” United States Census Bureau. 19 February 2021.

McAndrew, Frank. “Tag Archives: Dogs.” Facts & Opinions, March 2017. 19

February 2021.

“Opelika City, Alabama.” United States Census Bureau. 19 February 2021.

“Pet Industry Market Size & Ownership Statistics.” American Pet Products

Association. 19 February 2021.

“Pet Statistics.” ASPCA. 19 February 2021.

Petter, Olivia. “Dog Owners Are Happier than People Who Have Cats, Survey Finds.”

Business Insider, Business Insider, 9 April 2019. 19 February 2021.

Part 2:

Information/Awareness Objective: (what you want people to know)

• Within the next 6 months, have the adopters identify one advantage of adopting their dog.

Attitude Objective: (feeling around something)

• To have no more than 5 percent of adopters, Auburn and Opelika residents, who return their dog within the first 6 months after adopting their dog believe the organization did not properly pair a family to the dog.

Behavior Objective: (acting)

• To have a 10 percent increase of permanent Auburn and Opelika residents who attend one of the shelter’s adoption events in the next 6 months.

Part 3:

Strategy 1 (Based in Theory):

Develop an appreciation program for the Auburn Animal Rescue based on their proper pairing of animals to families and positive reviews, which is components of relationship and reputation management. Getting positive reviews will involve past adopters to give their testimonies about their experience of getting paired with their dog, which gives the organization a caring and favorable lead above other animal shelters in the area.

Tactics 1:

- Send a personalized hand-written thank you letter to Auburn and Opelika residents who adopted a dog from Auburn Animal Rescue that expresses the organization’s appreciation and includes a special treat for the dogs.

- The organization can have a few selected families who have adopted from Auburn Animal Rescue give their stories behind their adoption of their animal and an advantage they have gained since adopting their dog.

- Send personalized Happy Adoption Day cards at the beginning of each month to the animal’s new home with the Auburn Animal Rescue logo on the letter.

Strategy 2 (Best Practice):

In order to increase the number of adoptions of puppies, we will be doing something similar to the “day in my life” TikTok challenge along with our adoption day event. We will introduce one animal each day before the event that explains in a short video what each puppy likes to do, what his/her favorite snack is and a fun fact about them. At the end of each video will be the time, date, and location for the next adoption event that the puppy will be at. This will give Auburn Animal Shelter the publicity they need for their next adoption event.

Tactics 2:

- After developing the video, the Auburn Animal Rescue will post each video on all of their social media pages to reach different demographics. Posting the video via Facebook will be for older demographics, and Instagram reels and TikTok videos will be for younger demographics.

- If interested enough, viewers of videos will visit Auburn Animal Rescue's page or website. There they will find that the rescue shelter has an offer to “Adopt a dog for a day” in their bio; this will let the possible future owners test the chemistry between them and the dog.

- At the adoption event, we will invite, via mail or email, previous animals who were adopted from the Auburn Animal Rescue and their owners to come to the adoption event along with the community.

- Make a request that the adoption event could be hosted on the lawn in front of Samford Hall and have Toomer’s Corner lemonade served by Aubie.

Part 4:

Evaluating our objectives

Info/Awareness: Have a focus group once a month for six months after adoption to record replicability. In this focus group, they will talk about the benefits of adopting while comparing experiences with the animal adoption agency. Also, talk about what Auburn Animal Rescue could implement to keep adopters happy.

Attitude: Readability through surveying different groups. One month a group is sent three attitude questions. The next month another group of adopters is sent three different questions to receive feedback. The A/B experiment (pilot) could see if things improve month to month in the following six months after adoption.

Attitude Survey: On a scale 1 to 5, with 1 being that you strongly disagree and 5 being that you strongly agree, please rate your level of agreement to the following statements:

Group 1 Questions:

1. You were interested in adopting a puppy pal before coming in contact with an Auburn Animal Rescue advertisement.

2. You believe that you were properly pair with a dog from Auburn Animal Rescue.

3. You would attend a puppy adoption event in the Auburn Opelika area.

Group 2 Questions:

1. You would be interested in sharing a puppy pal testimony on social media and/or other platforms.

2. Receiving a “Happy Adoption Day” postcard each year would make you feel special and important.

3. You would recommend adopting a puppy pal from Auburn Animal Rescue to your friends and/or family members.

Behavior: Compare the number of adopters who participated in the 2020 community adoption event to the number of adopters who participated in the 2019 community adoption event.