Liverpool-based Urban Paws UK has become the “go-to” animal casting agency for luxury brands and leading high street names wanting to add anything from cats to camels to their campaigns.

The company was set up five years ago when former model and reality TV star Layla Flaherty decided to combine the three things she knew and loved best – modelling, TV and animals.

Retailers including John Lewis, IKEA and Aldi have all featured Urban Paws animals in adverts and Layla’s pet supermodels have ‘walked’ for high fashion labels like Tom Ford, Burberry, Gucci and Stella McCartney.

They’ve also appeared in videos for chart megastars Rihanna and Little Mix, as well as in theatre and films where they’re given their own chill-out green room to relax in between takes.

Layla also has a roster of social media influencers who can command five-figure sums to post a photo of themselves posing with the latest product or living a dream lifestyle by the pool of a new luxury hotel.

Layla says: “I spent a year training and creating a business plan before I launched Urban Paws and originally I thought it would be small and local at first and then maybe by about year four I could aim to get to well-known pet brands like Pedigree Chum.

“But after year one it just took off and it was blue chip company after blue chip company and we went international straight away.”

After starting off using mostly friends’ cats and dogs for photographic work, Urban Paws now has not just models on its books – including top dogs considered to be the Kate Moss and the Cara Delavigne of the canine world – but an extensive list of actors, influencers, bloggers and vloggers.

It’s not just pooches and moggies which are stealing the limelight either.

Urban Paws has a whole range of animals available for bookings including birds, snakes, rabbits, pigs, hedgehogs and camels. Chickens, too, are the unlikely superstars of pet modelling – one of Layla’s most sought-after chickens appeared in a Gucci campaign alongside Harry Styles!

Layla adds: “Often we’ll get a phone call saying, ‘we’re shooting a new sofa advert, this is what the dad, the mum and the kids look like, what do you suggest?’

“Then it’s up to us to look at everything from the design of the set and the colour of the sofa to the age of the kids, and decide what will work best.

“The business now has a worldwide reach so if a company is launching a product and they want it to be promoted in Europe and the US, we can place it with our influencers.

“For instance we could offer them two dogs from the UK, two from France, two from Germany and two from the US, all posting the same kind of content on their social media accounts.

“That way the client gets a worldwide campaign which has a potentially huge reach because some of our biggest influencers have followers into the millions.”

Layla believes animals are becoming more influential, especially in advertising, “because they don’t divide opinion in the way a lot of human celebrities do”.

“You can have someone who has a lot of followers but for every fan who loves them, there’ll be as many people who don’t.

“People are more likely to pay attention to what an animal has to say, even if obviously it’s the owner saying it for them, because they just love animals. You get that emotional connection with them.

“It might seem odd that an animal has millions of followers, but I think a lot of people are just mesmerised by the lives that they lead. They get to travel, to go to film premieres and to have this extraordinary lifestyle and there’s just something fascinating about that. It’s not even a jealousy thing, it’s just a ‘wow’.”

Related posts:

Call for cats to participate in study and receive free health checks Flea advice from The Liverpool Vets’ Danielle Greenberg Packed family programme revealed for LIMF Jacaranda Records to throw first birthday bash Bill Nighy film to shoot in Merseyside in August New scheme to inform public about Liverpool roadworks