BARK Invites You to Help Solve the Crime with Officer Pupke Using Interactive SMS Adventure

Playtime is an immersive experience for dogs and, with the launch of BARK’s new ‘Chews Your Own Adventure’ SMS text adventure, it can be as immersive and fun for humans. As part of its latest collection of toys and treats, BARK invites customers to take an interactive SMS journey with Officer Pupke to help solve the ‘Case of the Destroyed Toy’. Humans and dogs that purchase the Officer Pupke squirrel toy will be given instructions, via the toy’s hang tag, for how to report for duty and begin the crime-solving mission. Officer Pupke and the full City Sniffer’s Guide to NYC collection will be available in Target stores nationwide, on Target.com, and on BarkShop.com beginning April 22, 2018. By texting DOODY to 79987, you and your dog will be taken on a ride-along with Officer Pupke driven by BARK’s interactive dog bot. Users solve the case by interviewing a witness and piecing together clues. Will you choose to play Good Cop or Bad Cop? Dig deeper when something smells suspicious, or cut to the chase? Every decision counts. When users finish the adventure, they will be invited to continue the conversation with a real-life human from BARK’s Happy Team (our force of customer support folks in Columbus, OH). Whether a user has questions or just wants to swap puppy pics, we know that talking to us is the fastest way to turn a person into a lifelong promoter, and Happy is there every step of the way. BARK’s custom SMS text adventure was built with the help of BlackOps following the company’s launch of the first-ever Twitter “dog bot” in 2016. Before that, BARK unveiled a wildly successful (yet far less intelligent) “Talk to a dog” option for callers to BARK’s phone lines, which is just a bunch of incoherent barking that is shockingly chosen by 5% of all callers! Test out the dog bot by texting DOODY to 79987.