Nestlé Purina

CATDAQ - The world’s premier made-up stock market for the hottest trending cat videos.

I helped Purina attract a new generation to their products – targeting a cat-video-loving gen-Z audience. Felix CATDAQ ran for 24 episodes on YouTube – becoming the fastest growing pet channel globally on Youtube in 2015.

Lead Creative – Deep Focus / ENGINE

Creative | Brand | Writer & Director | Strategy

Background

Felix is Europe’s biggest selling cat food brand but after years of being outspent by their nearest rival, Whiskas, they trailed in brand favourability and awareness. Our research showed this perception was hard to shift, cat owners were stubbornly loyal to ‘their’ brand. So rather than focus our efforts on these existing cat owners, we targeted the cat owners of the future.

Approach

Despite the popularity of cat culture with Millennials, it was a surprisingly overlooked audience by petcare brands. Research showed us the likelihood of these cat-video-sharers becoming cat owners in the future was high, giving Felix a golden opportunity to establish favourability, awareness and affinity with people that didn't even own a cat yet.

Cat video trends don’t sit around. Their popularity weans and wanes. Hang on a minute; it’s kind of like a stock market. Enter CATDAQ. The very first cat video stock exchange.

We cast influencers Arron Crascall and Jayne Sharpe to front fictional stock-market style news bulletins to run before cat videos on YouTube, providing viewers with the latest news on what’s hot and what’s not in cat video trends. All based on real data – well most of it.

The results

Felix CATDAQ ran for 24 episodes as pre-roll adverts and its own YouTube channel – with over 20 million views it become the fastest growing pet channel globally on Youtube in 2015. During the campaign period, in which no other marketing activity was running for Felix, we saw a 9% uplift in Felix's brand awareness and most importantly – favourability was up 12%. Cat videos really are the currency of the Internet.

Sadly – pets (and promotional pet channels) can’t live forever. CATDAQ is no longer live. RIP CATDAQ.