Good NewsIKEA helps shelter dogs find new homes
"Because sometimes, a furry friend is all it takes to complete your home."
If you're likely to impulse-shop at IKEA, be warned: Some stores are now promoting pet adoption.
You might come home with a POÄNG chair and a dog.
The idea started in Singapore, where IKEA stores teamed up with the Animal Lovers League Shelter and Save Our Street Dogs to launch the Home for Hope project, an initiative that encourages shoppers to adopt a pet by placing life-size cardboard cutouts of shelter dogs in the store's showrooms.
Each cut-out is an enlarged photo of an actual dog currently up for adoption. Unique QR codes let shoppers scan the dogs to learn more about them.
"IKEA is really happy to kickstart this Home for Hope initiative because we find that it's really a very refreshing and unique way to encourage Singaporeans to adopt homeless dog," said Sandra Keasberry, IKEA assistant marketing manager.
The process of making the cardboard-cutout pets was documented in a video by Home for Hope.
The brilliant idea has spread to the United States.
An IKEA store in Tempe, Arizona, recently partnered with the Arizona Humane Society to create a similar program.
"We thought it was a perfect way to show people what their home would look like with a pet in it," Becky Blaine, IKEA Tempe's marketing director, told Business Insider.
The Tempe store reported that, since joining the pet-adoption effort last month, all six animals featured in their showrooms have been adopted. More cutouts will be arriving by the end of the month.
"In other words, this strategy works," wrote Esquire's Michael Howard. "It just needs momentum. As Home for Hope reports, 'most animal shelters can only afford to voice their messages using social media,' a largely ineffective format for recruiting new animal lovers."
Learn more about Home for Hope here.
