IKEA encourages shoppers to bring home a barking friend along with a new sofa

For real homes, you need something more than interiors—you need this energy and beat that is brought by pets like dogs. The Animal Lovers League Shelter and the Save Our Street Dogs have teamed up with IKEA Singapore to roll out a new initiative, Home for Hope, that encourages consumers to adopt homeless canines from shelters.

The approach is simple. The retailer placed life-size cardboard cutouts featuring real dogs’ portraits across its showrooms so that shoppers could spot the printed replicas of homeless pets here and there—resting on the sofas, sitting near the beds on the carpets, begging for another slice of sausage at the dinner tables, and more. In the very first seconds, people thought these were real pets, and after a while they finally realized that these were just adorable, but motionless pictures of the dogs with a tag featuring a QR code on their collars.

When scanned, the tags revealed additional info about the bog in the picture, read their bios and discover how to adopt the pet. The information is stored on the dedicated Home for Hope website, which is created both for those who are ready to “extend” their families and those who just want to support the cause.

The initiative was also joined by other furniture retail giants Foundry and Grafunkt, which lended their showroom spaсe to the cardboard dogs.

“Home For Hope was borne out of a pressing issue. With a limited budget, most animal shelters can only afford to voice their messages using social media. Problem is, their followers are pet lovers and most already won pets. Hence, adoption rates are low/ a collective project with IKEA and other leading furnishings stores will provide much-needed exposure for the homeless pets,” reads the site.