Shelter’s Edge

This week on Take Five Friday, I’ve got 5 questions for Amy Shrodes, Manager of Development at the Central Oklahoma Humane Society and the driving force behind this awesomeness…

The place? Midnight Woofness IV, last weekend’s mega-adoption event in Oklahoma City, at which 586 animals found new homes. The making of this masterpiece? Here’s the scoop…

Shelters’ Edge: I heard it was a spur-of-the-moment decision to put together the flash mob…exactly just how spur-of-the-moment?! Have you been involved in one before?

Amy Shrodes:  I came up with the idea ten days before Midnight Woofness! I was in my car brainstorming while driving, trying to think up what we could do to get people involved with the event who may not be ready to adopt at this time. I wanted to do something fun to show how many people in OKC support pet adoption. Our theme was “A True Homecoming,” and we already had cheerleaders scheduled to attend the kickoff. A flash mob seemed like a no-brainer!Yes, we had been involved in one once before. A local social media campaign trying to get Ellen DeGeneres to attend a Thunder game in our city during the NBA playoffs put one together and invited OK Humane to attend.

Shelters’ Edge: Tell me a little about your planning process—there must have been a gazillion little details to take care of!

AS: The first thing I did was get on the phone with one of my superstar volunteers who attended the Ellen flash mob with me, Whitney Zeka-McFadden.  I told her about my idea, and she was all for it!  She called a friend of hers who is a dancer and I started emailing some of my local contacts. Her friend agreed to choreograph the dance (this was on a Wednesday, just ten days before the event), and I met them on Sunday to look at the draft dance video. They made the instructional video after that, and the Tuesday before the event we blasted the video all over Facebook and Twitter.  The dance happened on Friday night of that same week!

Shelters’ Edge: Who choreographed the steps, and how much rehearsal did you have?

AS: Ashley Armstrong volunteered to choreograph, and I organized one rehearsal night for the OK Humane staff members. They were each allowed to invite two friends. We also briefly rehearsed it with the cheerleaders about 30 minutes before the dance inside the training area at PetSmart.

Shelters’ Edge: Did you have any surprises or anything unexpected happen along the way?

AS: We were a little nervous that no one would show up and it would just be the cheerleaders and OK Humane staff members participating, but we found that a lot of the people “waiting in line” had actually learned the dance from the video and joined in!

OK Humane shared this one on their Facebook page along with the caption, “Everyone is in a good mood at Midnight Woofness—this little guy missed the flash mob by a few hours, but he gave it his all just the same!”

Shelters’ Edge: Any advice for shelters who’d like to try something like this?

AS: Don’t be afraid to use your contacts and ask for help!  Make a Facebook event for it and it will go viral.  And finally….don’t take it too seriously. We told all of our staff members not to stress about getting the dance perfect, just have fun with it!!

Shelters, have any of you done—or thought about doing—something similar? Share your experiences (and a link to the vid—you know we wanna see!) in the comment box.

Tags: Adoption Marketing, Adoption Programs, Marketing & Media, Saving Lives

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