The Campaign

In Australia, branded content in the pet food category is rare. Instead, pet food brands rely on traditional advertising, like prime time television commercials and print ads in glossy magazines. Our audience is flooded with it. That’s why it was so important to create a campaign that entertained and engaged our audience via branded content. And not just any old content, content created by cats.

Results

Whiskas is known as the purple cat food brand. They’re also a leading expert in cat care and understanding. But no one knew this. Instead, people were trawling through the Internet for advice. Or having to pay for it. We saw this as an opportunity to prove Whiskas expert understanding. We realised that cat content was all shot from the owners’ point of view. So we decided to flip the perspective and created Whiskas CATSTACAM, the social way to help people better understand cats. We built some cameras that let cats take photos from their point of view and for the first time ever, post them directly to their very own Instagram account. As each photo shed new light on cat behaviour, we were there to explain why, with #AskWhiskas. Helping people better understand cats whilst proving our expertise in cat care and understanding. To ensure we reached the right audience, we launched the campaign by giving CATSTACAM devices to famous Internet cats and celebrity cat owners. The photos gave our audience a fascinating insight into their cat’s world and gave WHISKAS the opportunity to decode curious cat behaviour via #AskWhiskas. The campaign also consisted of an online film, Facebook gallery and digital out of home media.

CATSTACAM tapped into the Internet’s existing love of cats, and created a brand new type of cat content people could engage with whilst enabling Whiskas to prove their expertise in cat care and understanding. The cats in the campaign uploaded just over a thousand photos to Instagram, and they were shared to an audience of over 13 million people online. We answered hundreds of #askwhiskas questions better educating people about cats and CATSTACAM was covered on blogs and news sites all over the world. Some made memes about us. And one person even tried to build their own CATSTACAM device.

The Internet went crazy for CATSTACAM. In just a few weeks: • We were featured on blogs and news sites all over the world. • The online film was viewed over 1.1 million times. • #Catstacam was one of the top three trending hash tags globally. • The campaign generated over 585 million media impressions. • Generated over $13 million dollars in earned media. • A 400% uplift in sales. • And #AskWhiskas was so popular it has become an ongoing social service.

In Australia, the pet food category is dominated by traditional advertising, selling rational benefits like taste and health. The most powerful aspect of cat ownership wasn’t being talked about – care. Whiskas wanted to stand out and talk about exactly this – their cat care and understanding expertise. We knew traditional advertising wouldn’t work. So rather than show and tell our care expertise we wanted to prove and share it. To do this, we used entertaining branded content to engage our audience. The twist? The content was created by cats. Whiskas CATSTACAM let cats take photos from their point of view and post them directly to their very own Instagram account. All photos were branded by a hashtag. And whenever a photo captured curious cat behaviour, we were there to explain why via #AskWhiskas.