We know that short-term foster care can have immense benefits in helping lower stress levels in shelter dogs. Research shows that just a one or two night stay away from a shelter can drastically reduce dogs’ cortisol levels. And upon returning to the shelter, cortisol levels returned to baseline. Meaning the short-term foster sleepover essentially serves as a break or vacation for them.

Charlotte-Mecklenberg Animal Care and Control (CMACC) has had a thriving staycation and daycation (field-trip) program for several years. But with the two recent, uncharacteristic snow storms that hit their area, they decided to rebrand staycations to “snowcations” to drum up more interest amongst their community. Thankfully – with a little planning, media and communications outreach – it worked.

Engaging the media and their community

The first storm was predicted to be very icy with possible widespread power outages. The storm was approaching on a weekend, so their goal was to push a media release out with “Pet Preparedness Winter Weather tips” on the Tuesday prior, and offer interviews to the media.

Their tip? Get the news media in prior to when they get busy. “Media can come to get video and a ‘evergreen’ interview. This means it is an interview that can be used throughout this specific storm or the rest of the winter storm (as long as you don’t reference specific things like days, times, etc. in your interview, this works great!),” shared Melissa Knicely, Communications & Outreach Manager for CMACC.  “Also remember that a lot of stations don’t have a lot of photographers on the weekends, so getting this knocked out during the week was critical. For us, the winter weather was expected on a Friday into Saturday, so getting the reporters to come out before they get busy covering the actual storm was key. Most media outlets are looking to share tips well ahead of the weather.”

Marketing snowcations

The CMACC team started marketing the need for snowcations starting Thursday before the first storm. Snowcations were promoted in all interviews and on social media. Knicely shared that the intent was to get as many dogs in foster homes as possible since they were going to be closing to the public at some point, which means no dogs leaving the shelter.

Once Friday arrived, they had a better idea of when the storm was going to hit. They continued to push snowcations, along with putting out a closure schedule. They also put out a graphic and media alert about coat/paw care, while pushing pet safety and bringing animals inside. They had seven different media segments scheduled during the preparation period.

Between January 20 and January 26, (when first release was sent), CMACC had 90 snowcations (foster care for up to 10 days), and 66 Fosters for R&R (rest and relaxation foster care for more than 10 days)! There were also 59 foster animals adopted in the same time frame. They were very pleased with the results.

Round two

After making it through a successful first storm, another snow storm expected for the very next weekend. “We built out more social media content about snowcations throughout the week, and continued pet winter safety reminders, but no big media push this week since we just covered the topics and they now have ‘evergreen interviews’ they can use,” explained Knicely.

As Friday arrived, they did one last push going into the storm. “We had one more media alert announcing closure on Saturday and snowcations. We also did a Live on Facebook/Instagram with the communications team going over pet safety,” Knicely said

Things to note about this particular media alert, Knicely shared, “The top had new information about the shelter closure. We still pushed snowcations, but due to the questions we were received from media, on social, etc. I also added an FAQ to answer the most common questions. I also added the winter weather tips at the bottom, just so they are still there is someone wants to reference them.”

After the storm

Post storm, Knicely emphasizes the importance of showing the good work your team did, like they did on Facebook and Instagram. She said many news organizations shared this. They also always try to add a note to donate/support on all recaps. In this case, they asked their community to support their pet enrichment fund.

Source: Chew On This