ABOUT

Concept:
The creative challenge was not to idealise the adoption journey, but to make it feel real and possible, using social as a supportive space for exploration rather than persuasion. Tto do this, we worked closely with a broad range of people who have previously adopted, including LGBTQ+ parents, single adopters, ethnic minority families, those adopting siblings, families with birth children, and those who adopted children with disabilities, to create a bank of ‘Meet the Family’ content. Through real imagery and first-person quotes, we shared honest insights into both the adoption process and life after adopting. This was supported by short, accessible captions that gently encouraged those considering adoption to take a first step via the You Can Adopt landing page.

Alongside UGC, our organic content mix included myth‑busting posts challenging common misconceptions about who can adopt and what’s required, adopter Q&As, podcast clips featuring real adopters discussing different stages of their journey, and data‑led content rooted in insights from adoptive families themselves. Together, these assets formed a coherent, always‑on social presence, blending education, reassurance and representation, and designed to build trust over time and empower prospective adopters with the confidence to begin their journey.

By showing the honest journeys of families who had already been through the adoption process, the content became a powerful tool to alleviate others’ fears, thoughts and questions – leading to greater trust in the process due to seeing themselves reflected in the process.

Execution:
On organic social, we applied a range of tactics across owned channels to sustain engagement and deepen understanding, including:
* Prioritising content formats chosen to reflect how people consume social, with short‑form video used on Instagram and TikTok to drive reach and watch time.
* Data‑led myth busting content simplified perceptions and made all questions feel normal, ensuring everyone seeing the content felt that their worries and concerns had been heard and, most importantly, answered.
* Providing a continually refreshed suite of assets for partners such as VAAs and RAAs to share on their channels, with a centralised ‘toolkit’ outlining content strategy, creative and messaging, alongside video, carousel and static assets (both national and regionalised.
* Consistently applied trending formats on TikTok to push discoverability and shareability, while community reshares from adopters and partners extended reach far beyond owned channels.
* Using community management, we then turned real questions and concerns left from those reached on our content into question-and-answer-style carousels.
* Performance insight played a critical role throughout the year. Organic results were continuously reviewed to identify the strongest themes and formats, with content refined to align with evolving audience consumption habits.

User‑generated content was a core pillar of our organic social strategy, with adopters positioned as co‑creators rather than contributors. Throughout the year, we:
* Commissioned families to create short‑form video content, helping maintain momentum within always‑on activity and ensuring fresh, relevant assets were continually feeding the channel. Briefs provided clear guidance on formats, messaging and tone to ensure content felt authentic while remaining aligned to overall objectives.
* Invited families to submit their own adoption journeys, capturing lived experience in their own words. These stories were translated into storytelling carousels, using first‑person quotes and authentic pictures to build trust, normalise adoption and provide powerful social proof.

Paid social was also a key execution channel that enabled us to meet the recruitment element of the brief. We actively converted awareness into action through a range of targeted, performance‑led tactics, including:
* Both our creative assets and targeting approach were tailored at a regional level, spotlighting local adoption needs, relevant statistics, and nearby agencies in each priority area to ensure the campaign felt highly relevant and impactful.
* Testimonial-led UGC was also then developed into paid assets, providing reassurance and social-proof for retargeting audiences down the funnel.
* In partnership with multicultural agency MMC, we also developed culturally relevant awareness ads to engage Black prospective adopters, a key priority demographic, ensuring the campaign reflected the communities it aimed to serve.
* We also introduced TikTok as a recruitment channel for the first time, evolving its role beyond awareness to support consideration and action, while simultaneously building new audiences and retargeting pools to feed lower‑funnel paid activity.

Results:
Results proved we were successful in meeting both the awareness and recruitment elements of our brief.

Awareness:
* Through an always‑on presence across Meta (Instagram and Facebook), You Can Adopt built year‑round visibility and trust, delivering 35.8 million views and reaching 14.1 million people, alongside 56,230 content interactions.
* This sustained connection translated into real intent, driving over 100,000 profile and page visits and 146,094 link clicks – where audiences were able to access trusted information whenever they felt ready.
* In parallel, TikTok emerged as a powerful discovery and reassurance channel, with organic content across 2025/26 delivering 13.9million post views, 29,863 profile views and over 100,000 engagements through authentic, short‑form storytelling.

Recruitment:
* Paid media drove 71,000 outbound clicks, a 335% year‑on‑year uplift across the whole of 2025/26.
* Paid social drove 43,000 (61%) of these outbound clicks, at an average cost of £2.19.
* This represents You Can Adopt’s strongest and most cost-effective year to date and significant year-on-year improvement of over 50%, demonstrating how creative optimisation, audience refinement and media planning evolution have delivered sustained value against the client brief.

Crucially, these results are driving a lasting impact for those who our campaign is designed to support – children in need of a forever home. Data collected from local agencies for agency website sessions, enquiries, and registrations of interest directly correlates with our activity, demonstrating that we didn’t just drive website traffic, but actively encouraged people to enter the adoption process.