Our first brief was to support Greenpeace with an awareness driving campaign for National Tigers Day. There are only 3000 tigers left in the wild, and we wanted to raise the plight of the tigers with a new generation.
To reach a new, younger audience, we took a more playful approach and engaged them on a topic they already cared about. Introducing Cats Save Tigers, a meme-tastic campaign where we used the biggest cats on the internet to save the biggest cats in the wild.
Convincing the most famous cats on the internet to join in our campaign is a huge coup. These feline celebrities have greater followings than most human celebs, and a far more engaged cat-loving fanbase. They are a massive part of popular culture, and a great asset to utilise given the shoestring budget.
Using the influence of these mega-star cats, we created 162 million impressions, raising awareness about the plight of the tiger in the wild globally.
Generating an additional 45 thousand cativists (Cat-activists) to spread Greenpeace’s word.
Ultimately everyone was delighted with the result, and why wouldn’t they be? Without spending a single cent on media, we generated massive reach levels from influential voices like YouTube’s official channel on Twitter, People magazine and 90s music legend MC Hammer.
With this new body of cat-loving activists, we launched a follow-up campaign – Cats vs Bad Tuna. Greenpeace wanted to target the global brands that buy ‘bad’ tuna, especially for use in pet food.
One of the world’s biggest seafood exporters – Thai Union – had been exposed for human rights abuses and poor fishing practices that result in high catches of untargeted species, such as sharks, turtles and rays. Yet many brands still used them to source their tuna.
So, our cats returned to demand action from these companies to remove Thai Union from their supply chain. The PR furore that followed – backed up by the many loud voices of our Cativists – led to Mars and Nestlé publicly committing to changes that will make their products safer for both oceans and workers at sea.
