The Power of Positive: Selling Joy vs. Selling Sadness

If you work in animal welfare, it's fairly easy to get bombarded by negativity. There's an endless amount of work to do: animals to feed, exercise, train, and clean-up after; paperwork to complete; phone calls and emails to answer; and a list that can go on for much more than an eight-hour day. There are frustrations with length of stay issues, slow adoptions, owner surrenders, abuse cases, and even politics. However, as adopting organizations, it is extremely important that we keep in mind that getting animals into homes is a business of selling hope and happiness.

As much as the tide is turning and more and more families are choosing to adopt their pets, sectors of the public (who are still valuable potential adopters) already think of shelter animals as damaged or having behavior problems or some other issue that prevents them from being a "good" pet. Promoting stories of abuse, neglect, injured and unloved animals adds to this misconception and can even amplify it. There is strong evidence to support the fact that positive ads are much more successful in promoting adoption/rescue and raising the value of the humane organization.

A recent article discussed this approach, and revealed that positive messaging creates measurable differences in adoptions, donations and even in volunteer recruiting. Traditional advertising in animal welfare includes PSAs and spots on abuse and neglect, showing images of injured, scared and "damaged" animals with the intent of appealing to the public's sympathetic side. Large, more well-known organizations use this format in their strategic campaigns, to solicit donations and support from the animal-loving public, but it is not a good strategy for those of us whose goal is not just donations, but adoptions as well. But for smaller organizations whose business is making matches between pets and families, the audience includes potential adopters, and for the average citizen images of suffering and sadness are not appealing. As such, our community-based organizations need to design marketing tools with a multi-prong approach and purpose (adoption, fund raising, education, etc.).

A large component of selling joy starts in our shelters, from the moment an animal comes to us (and no matter how  the animal comes to us). With the exception of owner surrenders and animals from criminal cases where some of an animal's history is known, most animals come to shelters without papers and without a reliable history that tells us about their past. As a result, the temptation for speculation is front and center. Not only do we guess at breed based on what the animal looks like, we also guess at his past. But speculation at the history and origin of animals, and then promoting those guesses as fact, is damaging and inaccurate.  For instance: Not every dog with scars was a bait dog; Not every pit bull with scars was fought;  Not every skinny dog was intentionally starved; And not every bloody or mangy dog was abused. Because we do sometimes see the worst of humanity and way animals suffer, it becomes easy to fall into negative thinking about each animal's origin. But it just isn't true for most animals. The best thing we can do in a job in which the history of our "clients" is almost always unknown, is to stick to the facts. Observe the animal in your care, document it, and share that information with the new owner.

As far as outright advertising and promotion, consider what Austin Humane did (check out their great videos on the homepage): No matter the medium (posters, fliers, radio or tv ads, newspaper ads, Facebook, Twitter, etc.) focus on the joy that animals bring to our lives and how to sell that idea to potential adopters of all kinds, both those who already support your shelter and those that you have yet to reach. Use images that convey happiness, togetherness, and family. Use positive words that are engaging and will drive people to your organization. Focus on the human-animal bond and the emotional connection of having a pet become a family member. Best of all, promote the greatness of shelter animals as you know them, because even those who have suffered often get a chance at all that life as a pet has to offer!