IF YOU THINK YOUR CAT IS PLOTTING AGAINST YOU, a series of roadside billboards and sidewalk stencils purporting to come from a mysterious organization called Cats Against Clay is working. “Cats will have the last word,” an accompanying New York Times ad read. “Victory.”
The stealth campaign is for kitty litter brand Feline Pine, which bills itself as better for cats and owners because it’s dust-, perfume- and chemical-free. A URL in the ads leads to a site with angry postings from cats supposedly threatening household retaliation if their “demands” aren’t met.
At press time, Feline Pine hasn’t been mentioned in the campaign. The strategic aim is to get cat lovers thinking as much about the litter they choose for their pets as they already do about the food they offer, says Bob Shaw, owner of Charlotte, NC-based Concentric Marketing, Nature’s Earth’s agency.
Research showed that Feline Pine’s market is “cat indulgents” — people who are more likely than average to take pictures of their cats and forward them to friends on Facebook, to read cat blogs regularly and buy a lot of treats for their pets. “But as much as they’re indulgent and love their pets, people weren’t making the connection on cat litter” and health issues, Shaw says.
Feline Pine brand manager Dan Henderson challenged Concentric to use social media to inject some fun into the campaign and differentiate the product without bashing competing litter. A Facebook page was started last October, and the billboards debuted in early April. But it was the NYT ad that really made the campaign take off.
“That really exploded the thing, and we saw people talking about it on Twitter and in blogs,” Shaw says. At the same time, the agency sent reps to Columbus, OH, to attend BlogPaws, the first cat blogger conference. Those ambassadors gave out “Power to the Pawpulace” T-shirts to the 250 blogger attendees and put “Think Outside the Box” hangers on their hotel doors.
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