Shailene Woodley teams with Mars and Calm to spotlight pet adoption
Mars partners with Calm and Shailene Woodley to link pet adoption with mental wellbeing, adding adoption-fee support and free Calm memberships.
There is a specific kind of calm that only pet people recognise: the quiet routine of feeding time, the grounding weight of a cat settling in, the way a dog forces you to go outside when your brain wants to spiral.
That emotional reality is what Mars is tapping into with a new collaboration with Calm and actor Shailene Woodley, built around pet adoption and mental wellbeing. The company outlined the initiative in an official announcement on its newsroom.
Mars and Calm are positioning adoption as “changing two lives”, the pet’s and the adopter’s, ahead of Mars Global Adoption Weekend (October 3 to 5, 2025). The effort leans on a global survey commissioned by Mars and Calm that found 83% of pet owners say their pet has improved their mental wellbeing, and 73% say their pet encourages them to stop overthinking or worrying.
Table of contents
Jump to each section:
- Why pet adoption stories resonate right now
- What Mars and Calm are doing for Global Adoption Weekend
- How Shailene Woodley and Calm turn advocacy into content
- What this means for marketers
Why pet adoption stories resonate right now
Pet adoption content works because it is instantly human. It is not abstract “wellness” messaging. It is a before-and-after story people can picture: a shelter animal getting a home, and a person getting companionship, routine, and comfort.
The campaign also arrives with a stark supply of stories waiting to happen. Mars cites an estimated 12 million dogs and 4 million cats in shelters across the globe, and separately notes around 16 million dogs and cats in shelters waiting to find a home. Either way, the scale makes the emotional framing feel less like branding and more like an urgent nudge toward action.
This is the fandom element in pet culture: people who already have pets often treat the bond like an identity. They share “gotcha day” anniversaries, rescue origin stories, and daily rituals because the relationship is part of who they are. A campaign that validates that bond, and invites non-pet owners into it, has a built-in audience that wants to talk about it.
undefinedWhat Mars and Calm are doing for Global Adoption Weekend
Mars is hosting its second annual Global Adoption Weekend across more than 20 countries, working with shelters and supporting prospective pet owners through partnerships, events, and volunteering.
The tangible support details matter because they make the message testable in real life. Mars says it will:
- Cover more than $185,000 in cat and dog adoption fees at partner shelters in 21 US cities during October 3 to 5, with the PEDIGREE Foundation covering an additional $25,000 in dog adoption fees
- Support new pet owners in Poland with a six-month supply of pet food for cats and dogs adopted from partner shelters
- Donate 33,000 meals for pets in partner shelters in the Philippines
- Provide adoptive pet owners with three months of free Calm membership during October
This blend of support is also a reminder that “adoption” is not just the moment someone signs papers. The first weeks can be stressful, expensive, and emotionally intense. Offering food, fee coverage, and a Calm membership implicitly acknowledges that the adoption journey includes both love and adjustment.
How Shailene Woodley and Calm turn advocacy into content
Calm is folding the campaign into product experiences, not just awareness messaging. Woodley recorded a Sleep Story, Finding Four-Legged Friends, exclusively available on Calm, inspired by her experience welcoming pets into her life and stories of pets changing lives. Mars and Calm also describe this as Calm’s first-ever pet-inspired content collection created in collaboration with Mars, featuring free-to-access content like meditations, breathing exercises, and soundscapes.
That creative choice is important because it avoids the usual brand-celebrity trap of “famous face says a nice thing.” Instead, it uses a format Calm users already understand as intimate and habitual. Sleep Stories are not meant to be scrolled past. They are meant to be lived with.
Woodley’s own framing reinforces the “two lives” line in a way that sounds like lived experience, not tagline: she describes how her rescue cats bring her peace when she is overwhelmed and remind her to slow down and live in the moment.
What this means for marketers
The most effective part of this campaign is that it treats “mental wellbeing” as something people practise, not something they claim.
- Put the feeling before the message.
The campaign leads with a relatable emotional truth: pets help people feel calmer and less alone. The survey figures (83% improved wellbeing, 73% less overthinking) support that story without replacing it. - Make the action easy to imagine, not just easy to click.
Adoption is a big decision. Covering adoption fees, offering food support, and providing a Calm membership are all ways to reduce the “what happens after day one?” anxiety. - Use content formats that match the audience’s rituals.
A Sleep Story is not just branded content. It is built for a nightly habit. That makes the collaboration feel native to Calm’s world, while still serving Mars’s adoption push. - Anchor purpose in operational detail.
Listing concrete commitments (fee coverage amounts, meals donated, participating countries) makes the campaign legible and accountable. It also gives local communities specific reasons to participate during the weekend window.
The broader signal here is that culture-first marketing does not have to mean meme-first marketing. Sometimes the “internet behaviour” is quieter: people sharing personal rescue stories, talking about anxiety, or seeking routines that help them regulate. Brands that can show they understand those real-life rhythms, and can support them with something practical, tend to earn more trust than campaigns that only ask people to “join the conversation”.
When a collaboration also fits naturally into an existing product habit, it stops feeling like a temporary stunt. It starts to feel like a story people can keep returning to, which is exactly what you want when the goal is not a one-time purchase, but a life change like adoption.
