Creative Execution

#WhatTheFluffChallenge2.0 was launched on SPCA Singapore’s Facebook page with a video compilation of Ollie, Galaxy, and Frosty taking on the challenge. It was also tagged with the challenge's hashtag to ensure it was seeded. To drive the message over a longer period of time, over the next week, three cutdowns – individual videos of each dog – were posted organically on SPCA Singapore’s Instagram Stories feed. For maximum impact and awareness, PR also blasted the campaign to media, influencers, and communities that were known to be passionate about pets and their welfare. The videos’ unassuming nature and promise to be another hilarious ‘What The Fluff’ addition was set up to draw viewers in, while its unexpectedly meaningful ending designed to cement the campaign message and ensure that it would continue to spread around the internet.

With a $0 media budget, the #WhatTheFluffChallenge2.0 videos racked up over half-a-million organic views in the first three weeks, over 473 million earned impressions, and an estimated $1.87 million in earned media. When the videos launched, pet owners immediately adopted our message - but soon after, other pet shelters (such as the National Animal Welfare Trust, three days later) followed suit. Influencers, talk show hosts, and social media users, from Asia, Europe, North and Central America, and the Middle East all joined the conversation - turning the viral gag into a global message on pet abandonment. But the biggest result? Internet trends often go viral, and then disappear in a blink of an eye. But even after the millions lost interest in this viral gag, adoption queries about the shelter dogs still continue to pour in, and the conversation of pet abandonment continues to spread.

The problem of pet abandonment is nothing new – yet often it's an issue swept under the rug. The overused execution of sharing pictures of abandoned pets usually gets a sympathetic ‘aww’, but as proven by SPCA’s pages, that reaction is not sufficient in driving shares or conversation beyond their existing community of pet enthusiasts and advocates. To activate the masses, SPCA needed to awaken the social power that every individual possesses – and through that, drive quality awareness, and start discussions about the very real issue of pet abandonment, exponentially. Leveraging the fact that this simple internet challenge managed to gain such traction and conversation in a very short time, we hijacked it by injecting an unexpectedly meaningful message to shift consumer reaction from HUMOUR to EMPATHY. We then pushed them to utilise their own personal social influence to spread awareness and start conversations around this shunned topic.