Jaspca Research Paper

John Ancrum for society for the prevention of cruelty to animals (JASPCA) aimed to redefine its identity and rename itself to Charleston Animal Society through the infamous Spike and Biscuit PR campaign. The state of JASPCA was deplorable at the time before the PR campaign took a place. What was form as a care facility for animals was perceive as a kill shelter for diseased animals or unwanted pets. Even though everyone in three people in the vicinity owned a pet, they either did not know about JASPCA and if they did, it was nothing positive. In order to revamp an identity, JASPCA considered a PR campaign which was aimed at animal lovers, animal/pet related businesses and veterinarians in order to increase awareness, public engagement in the
animal welfare cause and identify future prospects. Changing the face of JASPCA was not an easy task.
People had long perceived the place to be unimpressive, downtrodden, and dirty place that was not fit for their beloved pets to visit. Apart from the change in name to something short and more attractive, the Spikeand Biscuit PR campaign was aimed at making use of humor to create a buzz amongst the locals, enough to encourage them to visit the Charleston Animal Society (CAS) page. The creative campaign featured a series of presidential debates between a cat and dog. The unique and humorous nature of the overall message made it intriguing and an instant hit with the
locals. With a span of about 4 months, the total budget allocated to the campaign was $120,000 and it was limited to Charleston, S.C. the PR was handled by the advertising firm, RawleMurdy, pro bono (Sites.psu.edu, 2014). There were several messages related throughout the campaign. The main ones being the need to take good care of pets and that every animal deserves the best caring facility. Moreover, it also focused on targeting young children. This was because CAS believed in empowering the upcoming generation to be more loving towards animals by building compassion for them and providing them with greater knowledge about animals. Spike and Biscuit argued in favor of adoption and animal rights as well as healthcare and education for animals. The intriguing campaign was shared on all media platforms across digital media, print media, and OOH. In addition, the content consisted of posters, videos, posts, newsletters, PRs, and advertisements. In March 8, 2008 opening of CAS was grand and reflected the success of the campaign in terms of achieving five goals of conveying positive message to the public, increasing their engagement, optimizing media placement, building local relationships and executing the event successfully. Apart from other measures, a 12% increase in the number of adoption from the previous year’s reflected the immense popularity of the PR campaigns as well as its intended message. The success of the Spike and biscuit campaign also resulted in a number of brands copying the campaign or coming up with identical ones to support their cause as well.
While many failed at doing such a good job, one particularly won over hearts, as well as a number of awards, for the message and execution. The campaign was run by the American Pet Products Association (APPA) in collaboration with the Impetus Agency for the campaign named ‘Pets add life’ or PAL. It is a winner of the PR daily’s Non-profit awards for 2013 amongst many others (Prdaily.com, 2015). Like the Spike and Biscuit campaign, this campaign also featured talking animals, this time in interviews instead of presidential debate. Three-tier social media activation was aimed at generating the needed hype on Facebook, Twitter and, YouTube. The campaign was catering the population of US and made use of social media to increase customer
engagement. On Facebook, the campaign encouraged fans to send in their pet photos and stories as well as ask questions from the community or page members. Call to action was a pledge in form of an application which expressed theusers’ interest in adopting a pet animal, share a picture of their pet or volunteer at the animal shelter. Creativity was the word of the day as the campaign started incentivizing pet owners to write in poems for their pets or simply by volunteering more at their local shelter to win exciting cash rewards. Celebrity endorsement with the likes of Lauren Conrad and Alison Sweeney graced the campaign with their support which further intensified user interest and engagement (Prdaily.com, 2015). Twitter was also used effectively to publish meaningful content or tweets that were re-tweeted by excited users, increasing reach. The best and most successful aspect of the online campaign was the use of YouTube to share emotional videos with talking animals that stressed upon their need and longing for human affection and love. Aviralsuccess, the pet interviews comprised of six-series collection which was quite well-received the intended market. Both the PR campaigns mentioned above stressed upon the message of animal rights and welfare, particularly to encourage animal adoption. While one made use of several mediums to get the message across, the PAL PR used only digital media and due to their effective use of the different platforms, was able to generate an amazing response, leading to the ultimate success of the campaign.