Background Information
The “Fence Them In – It’s the Law” educational campaign was developed to address a number of issues facing the city of Fort Worth with regards to stray animals.
The problems arising from stray animals in a community are significant, with human health issues such as rabies and injuries from bites being two of the more serious issues. There are also often serious welfare issues for the strays involved; hunger, cold, heat, disease and fear from aggressive interactions with both humans and other animals.
For these reasons, and because strays are very visible to the human populace, the stray animal population is a prominent concern in the Fort Worth community. In 2013, there were 12,569 stray dogs removed from public streets in the city by Fort Worth Animal Care & Control (ACC.) Additionally, ACC documents an average of 100 dog bites a month are reported. Approximately half of those are owned animals.
In order to reduce these incidents, the “Fence Them In - It’s The Law” education campaign had a goal of significantly decreasing these incidents by delivering the message to the targeted areas.
The secondary goal was to educate residents and provide resources about the importance of other important issues such as vaccinating pets, licensing pets and keeping their pets on leashes.
Additional messages include:
- Leash Them – It’s The Law
- License Them – It’s The Law
- Vaccinate Them – It’s The Law
Target Audience
Based on internal research, we identified and targeted zip codes where problems such as dog bites and stray animals were the highest. We were able to identify our primary audience as pocket areas within the city that include the north and east side of the city in 10 zip codes.
Objectives
The objective of this integrated campaign was to educate residents in the target areas about the importance of fencing in their pets, vaccinations, licensing, spaying/neutering, and keeping them on leashes and off the street. We also wanted to remind residents about responsible pet ownership and educate them regarding the law surrounding pet ownership.
Challenges
The main challenge with this campaign was creating a message that would resonate with the target audience. We chose bold photographs and colors, “street gritty” with simple, straightforward messages. The secondary challenge was centered around the small staff of field officers from Animal Care & Control. We partnered with the Fort Worth Police Department to expand the delivery of the campaign messages and also worked with Neighborhood Police Officers who have a focus on community engagement.
Success Story
We just launched this program in March, 2014, and are beginning to track numbers of strays and dog bites in our target areas.
We have received good feedback from our field officers and Neighborhood Police Officers. Some of the early success of "booths to the ground" has resulted in another partner joining - The Spay Neuter Network - which is a non-profit that operates a mobile vet clinic (Hope Mobile) providing free and low cost spay and neuters to our target areas.
Take a look at the City of Fort Worth's integrated marketing components below. Click on each component image to view a full-size version.