How NKLA and TBWA Used a True Blood Star to Reframe Shelter Dogs
NKLA's 2013 Public Service campaign titled Kristin is a documentary-style film PSA created by TBWA\Chiat\Day and released in the United States in June 2013, featuring HBO's True Blood actress Kristin Bauer van Straten and her adopted shelter dog Asher to dismantle the widespread assumption that animals in shelters are somehow damaged or undesirable.
The campaign sits at the intersection of celebrity-led public interest advertising and social experiment filmmaking. Rather than presenting Bauer van Straten as a spokesperson reciting statistics, the creative positions her real-life relationship with Asher as the evidence itself. The bond between actor and dog becomes the argument, inviting audiences across the United States to reconsider what a shelter animal actually looks like in a loving home. The PSA was produced in two formats — a 30-second and a 60-second version — giving the campaign flexibility across broadcast and digital placements.
NKLA, which stands for No-Kill Los Angeles, is an initiative of Best Friends Animal Society, according to bestfriends.org. TBWA\Chiat\Day joined the coalition on a pro-bono basis in mid-2011 to help develop and launch the public-facing campaign, per bestfriends.org. By the time Kristin aired in June 2013, NKLA had grown into a coalition of more than 60 animal-welfare organisations, city shelters, and individual advocates working toward a single stated objective: making Los Angeles a no-kill city by 2017, as documented by bestfriends.org. The campaign earns a Clapboard Score of 63 out of 100, reflecting solid craft and a clear strategic premise against a backdrop of limited documented reach data.
NKLA entered the United States public interest landscape with a sharply defined mission. The coalition's core strategic problem was not awareness of animal shelters in the abstract but the persistent cultural perception that shelter animals carry behavioural or emotional damage — a stigma that suppressed adoption rates and filled Los Angeles city shelters beyond sustainable capacity. The Kristin campaign was designed to collapse that assumption by substituting emotional proof for assertion.
The strategic choice to anchor the PSA around Kristin Bauer van Straten was deliberate. Her role as Pam in HBO's True Blood gave the campaign immediate cultural credibility with a younger, entertainment-literate audience in the United States. The dog, Asher, was not a prop but a real adopted animal, and the documentary approach ensured the relationship read as authentic rather than staged. This technique — sometimes called a social experiment format — had been gaining traction in public interest advertising globally, and TBWA\Chiat\Day applied it here with discipline.
The competitive context matters. Organisations such as the ASPCA and the Humane Society of the United States had long dominated shelter-focused public interest advertising in the United States, often relying on distressing imagery of animals in poor conditions. NKLA's creative strategy under TBWA\Chiat\Day moved in the opposite direction: aspirational rather than guilt-driven, forward-looking rather than mournful. According to bestfriends.org, in NKLA's first year of operation in 2012, the coalition facilitated 23,421 adoptions and 4,458 spay and neuter surgeries. That same year, 4,200 fewer animals were killed in Los Angeles compared to the previous year, per bestfriends.org. These figures gave the campaign a credible platform from which to project optimism rather than crisis.
TBWA\Chiat\Day assembled a named creative leadership team for the Kristin PSA. Lee Clow served as Global Director of Media Arts, with Gage Clegg and Becca Morton acting as Group Creative Directors, Annie Johnston as Art Director, and Oke Mueller as Group Planning Director, according to adruby.com. The production was handled by an external production company, with executive agency production overseen by Guia Iacomin and agency production by Chris Spencer, per adruby.com. Account direction was led by Shannon Franqui, with planning supported by Megan Powers.
The film adopts the visual grammar of documentary rather than traditional advertising. Warm, naturalistic cinematography replaces the high-contrast, saturated palette common to celebrity PSAs of the period. Bauer van Straten speaks in the register of a person recounting experience rather than delivering a message, and Asher's presence throughout grounds the narrative in observable, unrehearsed behaviour. The result is a piece of Public Interest work that feels closer to a short film than a spot — a deliberate creative decision that extends engagement time and lowers audience resistance in the United States market.
Producing the campaign in both 30-second and 60-second formats reflects a considered media strategy. The 60-second version allows the relationship between Bauer van Straten and Asher to breathe and develop emotional weight, while the 30-second cut functions as a retrieval device for audiences who encountered the longer version first. This dual-format approach is structurally efficient for a pro-bono campaign working without the media budget of a commercial advertiser, maximising the usable footprint of a single production. The documentary aesthetic also aligns with the social experiment framing that NKLA and TBWA\Chiat\Day established as the campaign's creative territory.
No verified performance data specific to the Kristin PSA is publicly available. No entries for this campaign appear in the Cannes Lions, Effies, The One Show, D&AD, Clios, Webby Awards, or WARC Awards databases. Structural analysis therefore serves as the primary evaluative lens.
The campaign's effectiveness case rests on the broader NKLA trajectory rather than isolated spot metrics. According to bestfriends.org, January through May 2013 data showed monthly death declines in Los Angeles city shelters, with the cat and dog save rate increasing by close to six percent per month year over year. While it is not possible to attribute this trajectory directly to the Kristin PSA without documented causal data, the campaign operated during a period of measurable improvement in Los Angeles shelter outcomes, as reported by bestfriends.org.
Structurally, the PSA demonstrates several characteristics associated with durable public interest work in the United States: a credible celebrity anchor with authentic connection to the subject, a documentary format that reduces scepticism, dual-format production for flexible placement, and a positive emotional frame that invites rather than pressures. The absence of awards recognition does not diminish these qualities, though it does constrain third-party validation. The Clapboard Score of 63 out of 100 reflects a campaign that executes its creative premise with competence and cultural intelligence while leaving room for more ambitious reach and documented impact.
The NKLA Kristin PSA is a 2013 Public Interest film campaign created by TBWA\Chiat\Day in the United States. It features True Blood actress Kristin Bauer van Straten and her adopted dog Asher to challenge the assumption that shelter animals are damaged, supporting No-Kill Los Angeles's goal of making Los Angeles a no-kill city by 2017.
TBWA\Chiat\Day created the Kristin campaign for NKLA on a pro-bono basis. Lee Clow served as Global Director of Media Arts, with Gage Clegg and Becca Morton as Group Creative Directors, per adruby.com. Kristin Bauer van Straten, known for HBO's True Blood, stars alongside her real-life adopted dog Asher as documented by bestfriends.org.
NKLA aimed to increase shelter animal adoptions across Los Angeles by dismantling the cultural stigma around shelter dogs. The coalition's stated goal was to make Los Angeles a no-kill city by 2017, according to bestfriends.org. The campaign used an authentic celebrity relationship to make that case through emotional proof rather than statistics.
NKLA facilitated 23,421 adoptions and 4,458 spay and neuter surgeries in 2012, according to bestfriends.org. By early 2013, Los Angeles shelter save rates were rising by close to six percent per month year over year, per bestfriends.org. The Kristin PSA aired during this period of measurable improvement in United States shelter outcomes.
TBWA\Chiat\Day chose a documentary social experiment format to make the bond between Kristin Bauer van Straten and her adopted dog Asher feel unrehearsed and credible. This approach lowered audience resistance common to traditional PSAs in the United States and distinguished NKLA's creative strategy from guilt-driven competitor formats used by organisations such as the ASPCA.
The NKLA Kristin PSA did not win entries in the Cannes Lions, Effies, The One Show, D&AD, Clios, Webby Awards, or WARC Awards databases. The campaign earns a Clapboard Score of 63 out of 100, reflecting solid creative execution and a coherent strategic premise within the United States Public Interest category without documented third-party recognition.
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