Not enough people consider taking on a shelter animal. There are so many of them needing homes. Too many people don’t understand that they can be incredibly gentle and friendly.

Kind, sensitive and beautiful are adjectives not often associated with them.

Possible Moscow knew that the world abounds with heartstring-tugging shelter animal stories. The agency was working on a campaign for Hill’s Pet Nutrition. In the process of creating that work, it hit on a left-of-centre idea.

So Possible teamed up with Hill’s Pet Nutrition and Adopt a Pet to break through prejudices and misconceptions about shelter animals in a very different way, and get more shelter animals into the homes they deserve.

The agency created Adopt a Pack, a specially designed collection of Telegram (online messaging app) stickers and a bot, to make these animals part of people’s everyday conversations, breaking down prejudices along the way.

Maryam Ahunova, creative director, Possible Moscow, explained, “There’s only one way to become part of people’s conversations these days, by joining their messaging services and getting involved in their chats. And what are they doing there? Sending stickers. Animal stickers are especially important in Telegram so we thought instead of using abstract imagery, we’d use real animals in need of real help.

“We stumbled on this idea by accident while working on Hill’s larger strategy. It stuck with us – pun intended – due to its simplicity. When we discussed it at the end of a presentation that had been going on for hours, the Hill’s team agreed to the project right away! The next time we met, we had a sticker pack and bot ready to go and boring slide-shows were nowhere to be seen.”

The Telegram sticker pack consists of images of pets currently waiting for adoption. By sending a sticker with an animal that you like to a messenger bot, you can get its biography, photos and advice on how to feed it. Whenever the Adopt a Pet fund gets a new homeless pet, a new sticker is added to the pack and when the pet is adopted, its sticker disappears from the set.

Credits

Agency: Possible Moscow
Creative director: Maryam Akhunova
Creative: Yuri Korobov
Photographer: Roman Antonov
Designers: Evgenia Kuznetsova & Anna Trotsina
Programming: Oleg Sedikin
Business director: Sergey Rozhnev
Account director: Natalia Horohori

Client: Hill’s Pet Nutrition and Adopt a Pet
Marketing director: Alina Emirova
Brand manager: Oksana Artemieva
Digital managers: Elena Arzhatskaya & Natalia Krikunova