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Tear-off appeal:
Give this dog a home


Poster for dog shelter shows a pooch behind bars

Apr 17, 2008

There's nothing quite as heart-wrenching, especially for dog lovers, as seeing a droopy-eyed pooch caged behind bars.

One quick way to get people's attention is to put up ads on bulletin boards with little take-one tear strips at the bottom with a number to call, whether to sell used furniture or look for a roommate.

In Malaysia, Dentsu Malaysia brought these two notions together for a truly unique, low-cost campaign for the PAWS Animal Welfare Society, a small non-profit shelter in Kuala Lumpur.

Here's what the agency creatives came up with: a poster featuring a photo of a miserably adorable pooch behind bars that actually peeled off. At the bottom of each bar was a printed phone number and address to PAWS and inviting takers to come by and adopt an animal.

As each strip was pulled away, there was one less bar holding the pooch in his cage.

The posters used the clever image of freeing a homeless pet while also informing potential adopters of where to do so in a literal sense, all in a cost-effective manner.

“Because PAWS was unable to finance the production of conventional bulk-printed posters, we came up with the idea,” says Dentsu creative group head Woei Hern. “We didn’t need to print any extra posters. We just needed to replenish the bars once everybody had peeled them off.”

The agency placed the posters at veterinary clinics in higher-income areas of Kuala Lumpur, hoping to reach people with a love of pets and homes with spacious yards for the animals to roam.

“It seemed like a perfect match,” Hern says. “The first time we placed the posters up, it proved so popular we had to replenish the bars on the same day.”



Diego Vasquez is a staff writer for Media Life.




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