It’s What We’d Want: Use a Perspective Reversal Without Equating Different Needs

Read the campaign story

Petco announced its It’s What We’d Want If We Were Pets campaign in March 2021 alongside a broader retail repositioning. The archive describes films that initially show people and later reveal animals in their place. It records Droga5 and specialist production credits. The series and related platform activity count as one family; the 2022 award archive is not the launch date.

Editorial interpretation: a perspective reversal can interrupt an automatic judgement and invite the audience to consider a situation differently. The reveal supplies a compact narrative structure, but the analogy can also overreach. Imagining a familiar perspective may help someone notice a question without answering it accurately. The creative task is to use the reversal as an entry point, then provide a grounded explanation of the actual offer. A warm or amusing comparison should not be asked to supply evidence about needs that require different information or specialist judgement.

The sources are a brand announcement and an award entry, not independent health or behavioural research. This study does not adopt the retailer’s care framework, survey statistics, product-safety assertions or effectiveness claims as advice. Human preferences are not a substitute for species-specific guidance. The proposed exercise uses fictional adult roles around a paper service, with no animals, health questions, care changes, food, purchases or behavioural experiments.

State the useful similarity and the important difference

Before designing the reveal, write two sentences: what the comparison helps people notice and where it stops being reliable. A fictional library service might invite an organiser to consider a first-time visitor’s uncertainty, while acknowledging that the organiser cannot know every visitor’s needs. Ask reviewers to identify both the shared concern and the missing information. If the scene makes the two roles seem interchangeable, add the boundary earlier. Perspective-taking is valuable as a prompt for better questions, not as proof that the speaker already understands another person’s circumstances or can decide for them.

Make the reveal clarify rather than cancel the opening

A reversal should give earlier details a coherent meaning instead of making the audience feel that essential information was withheld unfairly. Test the opening, transition and final explanation separately. A small team can show original static panels with clearly invented characters, then ask what changed in the viewer’s interpretation. If the ending creates confusion about the service or who is speaking, simplify the device. The surprise should lead toward a more accurate understanding of the offer, rather than leave the audience with an amusing twist that has no useful connection to the practical decision.

Provide evidence after the empathetic invitation

An analogy can make someone willing to consider an offer, but the next information step should explain its specific scope and limits. Keep the practical description available without requiring the viewer to accept the metaphor. A small organisation can compare a role-reversal storyboard with a plain service card using identical facts. Ask what additional claims the dramatic version appears to establish. If it creates confidence about suitability or outcomes without improving understanding, narrow the language. The appropriate result is a clearer question and an informed choice, not certainty borrowed from an emotionally accessible comparison.

A small test for another brief

Proposed adaptation: a fictional library help desk could use a static storyboard in which an experienced organiser is shown encountering an unfamiliar catalogue, followed by a clear explanation that the scene illustrates one possible first-time experience. Compare it with a direct information card for the same service. Ask consenting adults what the analogy helps them notice and what it cannot establish about actual visitors. Use invented roles and no personal disclosures. This tests a bounded perspective reversal rather than claiming that one viewpoint accurately represents everyone else’s needs.

Record comprehension of the service, the intended perspective shift and the limits reviewers identify. Ask whether the reveal improves the explanation or merely creates surprise. Separate empathy-related interpretation from evidence of actual needs, suitability, wellbeing or historical campaign effects.

Stop if the comparison stereotypes a group, implies identical needs, substitutes emotion for practical evidence or encourages real care decisions from a fictional scene.

• Write the similarity and limitation before illustrating the scene.
• Keep the service facts identical in both versions.
• Provide readable text and explain the fictional framing before collecting feedback.