Every holiday season, millions of pets enter shelters operating at a breaking point. Chewy Claus, Chewy's annual holiday program where pets “write” in letters for the chance to have their wishes granted, has become a signature way we give back, fulfilling thousands of wishes each year, big and small, for pets and the people who love them. Every wish submitted also helps support pets in need, turning participation into real impact for shelter animals.
In 2025, digital charity often felt like homework: passive scrolling, fleeting sympathy, no real action. At the same time, the opportunity was to build on Chewy Claus’s momentum by bringing more next-generation pet parents into the fold and expanding participation beyond letter writing. We aimed to stop the doom-scroll and turn attention into impact, evolving how people could show up in a way that felt more interactive, social, and reflective of how younger audiences engage today.
So in Year 4, we introduced the Chewy Claus Wishathon: a high-velocity, social-first, live-streamed experience designed to open up new ways to participate in real time. By giving our community more ways to engage with and shape the experience, we transformed a beloved holiday program. The goal was simple but ambitious: convert passive engagement into tangible support for pets in shelters.
We wanted every interaction to feel meaningful, every comment to create momentum, and every wish to make an impact on a pet in need. By gamifying giving and putting control in the hands of the audience, we aimed to prove that the internet could mobilize for good at unprecedented speed, while growing awareness, deepening participation, and ultimately granting even more wishes for pets.
We re-engineered the classic telethon for the social era. Letters to Santa became interactive wishes in a simultaneous 45-minute live stream across TikTok, YouTube, and Instagram. Viewers submitted holiday wishes for pets, and each wish directly triggered donations to shelters, making generosity immediate and tangible.
The stream was designed for velocity and engagement:
Challenges included converting passive scrollers into active participants and keeping engagement high without paid media. We overcame this by designing content that gave the audience agency, creating a feedback loop where activity fueled both excitement and donations.
Chewy Claus became more than a campaign, it became a social event. By turning every comment, share, and wish into a measurable act of impact, we built a cultural moment where doing good felt as entertaining as it was essential.
The Chewy Claus Wish-A-Thon didn’t just perform, it reset the benchmark for live engagement.
The community’s momentum transformed the broadcast into a real-time movement. As participation surged, Chewy responded live during the stream, doubling its donation commitment and unlocking $5 million in supplies for shelters.
In under an hour, passive scrolling became collective action. The Wish-A-Thon proved that when you modernize the mechanic and give audiences agency, social platforms can mobilize communities at extraordinary speed, turning engagement into tangible rescue for pets in need.
