Our Blog: where do you stand?

Tears at the Office: Strategic Communications for Unwanted Pets

By: Amber Morris | 01/11/2011

Crying at work is definitely not a good career move, but I'm not ashamed to admit I shed tears while working on a client project today. 

Standing is an office of animal lovers. Many of us have four-legged family members. A few of us foster rescued animals (I've fostered eight puppies in the past three years). Cathy, our CEO, is on the advisory board of the St. Louis PetLover Coalition and we're working on an exciting new campaign they are launching in a few weeks aimed at saving pets in our region - thousands of dogs and cats are euthanized in St. Louis City and County every year due to pet overpopulation.

Our work on the campaign includes developing strategic communications and community engagement materials, as well as writing website copy. Today, I was searching PetLover Coalition member websites for images to use in a PowerPoint to help communicate the horrors that the thousands of homeless, abused or abandoned pets in our region face.

The moving rescue stories of the groups dedicated to helping these animals brought tears of joy at successful rescues, tears of sadness for those that didn't make it and tears of rage for those that were obviously abused and neglected.

I'm thrilled to be a part of this new PetLover Coalition campaign that focuses on engaging our community in reducing the number of homeless pets on our streets, in our shelters and potentially euthanized.

I will write another post about the program when it launches, but I decided something that moved me enough to cry in the office made it worthy of a post now. In the meantime, feel free to visit the PetLover Coalition site, like them on Facebook or follow them on Twitter.

Posted in Culture, Public Relations