The Dodo is the #1 digital media brand in the world for animal people and most-engaged with media brand in the world on social, owning the animal category across social platforms including Facebook, YouTube, Instagram, Twitter and Snapchat. We tell fun, entertaining, emotional stories about animals that make people laugh, cry happy tears, feel ALL the feels, and fall in love with animals. Our audience is everyone who loves animals, from people who are obsessed with their pets to those people who have dedicated their lives to protecting and saving animals.
The Dodo is the only dedicated animal publisher on Snapchat Discover, publishing a daily channel and four weekly shows: “Odd Couples,” “Little But Fierce,” “Pittie Nation,” and our newest franchise, “Wild Hearts.” We are also part of an exclusive group of publishers with the ability to create Curated Stories. Across all of the content formats on Snap, we leverage the viral potential of animal content and tell fun, but meaningful, animal stories to cater to Snap’s younger audience. Our daily channel features animal rescues, profiles, science & education, light-hearted humor and advocacy. We publish several Curated Stories each week using authentic and relatable fan-generated footage centered on popular pet themes.
In addition to optimizing our top-performing franchises for Snap, The Dodo produces bespoke content specifically for the Snap audience, including “Project Home,” which profiles a different adoptable animal every day from shelters all across the U.S.; "Wait For It," which showcases hilarious videos of animals who perform a surprising action at the end; "Holy Cute," which celebrates what The Dodo is best known for — heartwarming, adorable visuals that range from babies and their pit bulls to newborn animal babies being bottle-fed; and “Caught on Cam,” which spotlights pets getting busted by their owners for wreaking havoc on the home. We also publish engaging illustrations ranging from fun animal facts to games to “screenshot and share with your friends” graphics.
Our primary goal for the year was to increase the amount of time our audiences spend consuming our content, as we see this as the most honest measure of how engaged they are. We’ve also rolled out Snap-exclusive franchised content, games and diverse formats to further increase time spent, and to create a daily habit around The Dodo.
Our Snap audience seeks an ever-evolving diversity of content from us, so we constantly challenge ourselves to expand beyond what we know works to find new story types and design tweaks that will keep our channel feeling fresh. One of the biggest challenges we faced in 2018 was the redesign of the Discover UI, which prompted us to rethink our strategy. We developed an editorial process for laser-focusing on closely aligning with the interests of our young audience -- learning along the way that our viewers love spiders and animal births just as much as they love heartwarming dog stories. Many publishers saw a sustained dip in performance coming out of the redesign; however, thanks to The Dodo team's nimbleness and willingness to respond to small cues in audience behavior (e.g. via tile optimization), we were able to significantly increase our channel’s performance this year.
The Dodo is the only dedicated animal publisher on Snapchat Discover. It was recognized by the Digiday Publishing Awards in 2019 for Best Use of Snapchat.
