Adote Um Focinho (“adopt-a-muzzle”) is a non-profit that tries to find a new home for abandoned pets. It receives more dogs than it manages to trust for adoption, struggles to communicate efficiently and its financial situation is precarious.

We figured a good PR campaign could boost significantly the adoption of dogs, raise awareness for the NGO and the cause, and eventually generate donations.

The campaign was inspired from an interview by Zeca Pagodinho, a famous eccentric Brazilian singer. Whenever he drunk beer in a mall (you can do that in Brazil), he said, he ended up buying puppies in pet shops, feeling terrible about the animals condition.

The NGO activation aimed at reproducing Zeca’s condition to a wider audience of beer-lovers, pet-lovers and influencers.

We redesigned the beer labels to feature 6 actual abandoned dogs, and called consumers to adopt them, or donate to the cause. At the exact moment the beers hit the point-of-sales, we published a web movie and a hot-site, and released them to the press.

PR took off quickly, generating over 21 million media impressions the first week. The dog-models were all adopted, and many more from the organization, donations grew 150%, and beers were sold out so fast the brewery decided to produce a bigger batch and turn the special edition a permanent one.

To this day, zero budget was invested in media, production or logistics.

We redesigned the beer labels to feature 6 actual abandoned dogs, and called consumers to adopt them, or donate to the cause. At the exact moment the beers hit the point-of-sales, supermarkets and bars, in April, we published a web movie and a hot-site, and reached out to the press.

Placing happy-looking dogs on the bottles enabled us to generate empathy from the audience while providing share-worthy content, for a cause otherwise despised. This had a significant impact on the virality of the campaign and on the adoption and donation numbers. While PR took off quickly, beers were sold out in a record time.

Only surprise was the speed and reach the campaign recorded. In 2 weeks, the dog beer couldn't be found anywhere while demand was still high, so the brewery decided not only to produce a bigger batch, but to turn the special edition a permanent one.

In little over a week, the Sem Dono campaign received over 21 million media impressions, with zero media investment.

The campaign also went viral on social networks, enabling all 6 dogs used on the labels to be adopted, plus many others from the organization. According to the NGO itself, the adoption and donations numbers grew respectively 130% and 150% the same month.

For the brewery, beyond the genuine engagement for the cause, commercial figures, PR impact and positive feedback from customers were such that they instantly decided to produce a bigger batch and even turn Sem Dono an item of their permanent portfolio, to continuously help dogs find new owners.