Best Friends Times Square

Client: Best Friends Animal Society

Each day, 1,000 animals are killed in our nation's shelters. On November 25th, 2023, the Best Friends team took to Times Square in NYC to bring awareness to the #NoKill2025 Movement!

To help visualize the magnitude of this number, we brought 1,000 (recyclable) pet balloons to Times Square. Each balloon was tagged with a QR code to share information on how to help save shelter pets! In the cold, the helium contracts, so the balloons shrank. This represents how many animals feel in shelters: confused, afraid, and not fully themselves. Once the balloons settled into people's homes, they expanded, showing how a home makes shelter pets whole again. We put the power to save pets into people's hands - to help #SaveThemAll by visiting local shelters and adopting, fostering, or donating. The “In your hands” billboard and installation generated an estimated 1.5 million live impressions in one day with nearly a thousand QR code scans and a 72% engagement rate when we followed up. #NoKill2025 also made waves on social, with a 33% lift in mentions that month to make 5.9 million impressions for the year. The effort also inspired a landslide of media donations for an additional 28 million impressions in all! It disrupted iconic Times Square to bring attention to every tail and every whisker — and Best Friends’ lifesaving center in New York City is now the busiest it’s ever been.