'Thinking outside of the box' suggestions for promoting hard to home cats

[Debsymiller (Rufus' mum)]

We put posters up all over the place... vets, PAH, pet shops, libraries etc but poor Belle is jut not moving! There must be the right owner out there though... hopefully the newspaper article on her in the next couple of weeks will help.

[Janeyk]

Not many suggestions I'm afraid but if you had a cat in care for ages could you not advertise the odd one in your vets? our vets always has different things about like that on their walls.  I have also seen cats up for homing for ages on the rescues website and then they were in the local paper, it was 2 oldies (they put in a special plea) and when I rang enquiring about them a couple of weeks later they had found a home.

[blackcat]

Writing copy for newspapers is a bit of an artform. If you don't send them 'good copy' they won't use it. Best to give them dot points so they can write the story themselves. Or send them a 'teaser' so they can call you back. Otherwise you are really wasting your time unless it is a veeeeeeery slow news day....

[tiga]

Forgot to say:

If you want to look at a colouring or naming competition, I can give terms and conditions and an outline of what you need to do. I am preparing one at the moment for the horse rescue so you could just change the name, dates etc. This is what I do - marketing and PR.

[tiga]

While this isn't an idea to promote a particular hard to home cat - it is more general.

What about sending a feel-good story to the press. Maybe a story of a difficult to home cat (eg the diabetic cat), the sad story and then the happy ending with its new family and pic in new home. Have some quotes from its new owners. Also include that there are lots of rescue cats looking for a fresh start. It will encourage more people to see the benefits of homing a rescue cat in general and difficult cats. And in the current doom and gloom climate it will give papers a happy story for a change.

Another idea I am using with a horse rescue I work with is to hold a colouring competition. We are doing this to raise awareness and increase visitors to the farm. We will be approaching the local newspapers to put it in the paper and local businesses for small prizes. We will also be sending a pdf with the colouring competition to the local schools. Prizes don't need to be expensive. I'm not sure whether targeting children would be good for rehoming though as you don't want to get kids pestering parents and then the cats getting returned - so I'm not 100% on it. But it would still be good for awareness and press coverage. It may worth thinking about.

[Canterbury_cats (Sharon)]

Sadly newspapers dont! We have a small advert in our local papers that we pay for.. its not specific for catss just to make sure it people realise we are here.. and people do take notice of it. For particular cats i send endless stories to the papers but they dont often put them in... (we dont have a PR person at the moment (again!) ... so i just do the odd one every now again... but it needs to be more consistant..Although we did rehome Charile or diabetic cat through the papers... Radio and TV sometimes is the only way.. Or as HQ are suggestion Homing Shows.. however if the cat is in your care for such a long time we try to contact NCC or put out a plea for a local branch to swap.. We had Marcus in our care for months and months, no health issues but specific rehoming needs.. he was rehomed in a wk by Crawley Branch... So.. it does work ifyou ask local rescues... One plan is that they take a adult and swap with a litter of kittens..

I know that Pinkbear once tried to get a cat we had on the local news.. but it never happened. as they found another story to cover

[Kay and Penny]

I would expect them to do it for free - a well-told sob story ought to be good copy as far as the paper is concerned, as I suspect it would be an attractive feature as far as readers are concerned

and newspapers should support their local charities

[Debsymiller (Rufus' mum)]

Oh and as I said... al suggestions welcome whether you've homed cats or not

[Debsymiller (Rufus' mum)]

Great minds think alike! We have just taken out a contract for homing adverts with our local paper but it is not cheap! We are going to see how it goes.

[Kay and Penny]

I don't think I should be answering this as I have never been involved in rehoming cats - difficult or otherwise

but I think if I had the job round here I would ask my local weekly paper, which has a wide circulation, if I could have a small space each week to feature one of my cats, and write up a really heart wrenching story to go with the obligatory ahhh photo - I don't see why they would say no

[Debsymiller (Rufus' mum)]

I'm trying to think of interesting ideas for promoting cats other than the norm... (we do posters, homing shows, websites, forums etc)
All suggestions welcome!!!