"Vacancy" Ad Campaign asks New Yorkers, "Is there room in your life for a homeless pet?"
The advertising campaign was created to encourage New Yorkers to adopt their next pet from a shelter or rescue group instead of purchasing from a pet store. The Mayor's Alliance for NYC's Animals worked with Filter Advertising in New York City (who created the ads pro bono) to develop the ads two years ago for an outdoor poster campaign that ran for a month throughout the city. Now the campaign has been recast to reach the tremendous audience of New York City subway riders.
The campaign's revival was made possible as a result of the successful fundraising efforts by TAILS (Toward Animals In Loving Spaces) of the Mayor's Alliance for NYC's Animals — a group of young New York philanthropists who work with the Mayor's Alliance to help achieve its goal of transforming NYC into a no-kill community by 2015. TAILS raised the funds to place the ads at a spring fundraiser held specifically to fund the campaign. The timing of this campaign corresponds with the New York Week for the Animals, which takes place October 10–18 and features a wide range of animal-related events throughout New York State, including adoption events, spay/neuter clinics, microchipping clinics, and many more events that celebrate the importance of animals in our lives.
The ads' creators developed the "Vacancy" campaign as a simple, graphic and emotional approach to pet adoption based on a single premise: asking New Yorkers if they have room in their lives for a homeless pet. The situations depicted in the series of five ads show people in recognizable settings where a dog or cat would naturally be present. But instead of a cat or dog, the absence of a pet is suggested by a "vacancy" sign. For example, one of the ads features a sleeping young couple, and at the foot of the bed (where there could very well be a dog or a cat) is a vacancy sign. The tagline states, "Is there room in your life for a homeless pet?"
"We are excited to launch our first advertising campaign in the NYC subways, and hope that it will increase responsible pet adoptions in our city and decrease the number of homeless pets at our city shelters," says Jane Hoffman, President of the Mayor's Alliance for NYC's Animals. "We're grateful for the efforts made by the TAILS fundraisers and also Filter Advertising, who were the driving forces behind this moving campaign."
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