Today, more than 30,000 children are waiting to be adopted from foster care in Canada. The hard reality is that too many children linger in care for years and age out of the foster care system without an adoptive family — putting them at an elevated risk of negative outcomes. To help draw attention to this crisis, the Dave Thomas Foundation for Adoption-Canada launched a breakthrough campaign, ‘Up For Adoption,’ that coincided with November’s National Adoption Month. 

The creative for the campaign played off the surprising cultural insight that people are far more likely to pay attention to animal adoption than foster care adoption. To turn the tables on the topic, the Foundation partnered with McCann Toronto to create a campaign that looked like a typical animal adoption campaign: ads featuring kids playing with adorable animals along with the call to action: “Your donation can help him/her find their forever home.” The surprise came when you visited the featured microsite, UpForAdoption.ca, which reveals that it’s not the animals in the ads who may be up for adoption — it’s the children.