Animates are a pet supplies franchise operating in New Zealand and Australia. It’s a place for animal enthusiasts, run by animal enthusiasts. Animates exists to help nurture healthy, happy pets, foster deeper, loving relationships between pets and their owners, and provide “Everything for pets” – which also happens to be their brand line.

Enter any store and you’re guaranteed to hear “We get pets” – an insight that led us directly to our product/solution.

The goal was to get cat owners in-store. By creating a piece of DM that was the product AND the communication, we achieved our goal through an unconventional means: by creating something so compelling that they came to us.

With little to no media budget to launch the collar, our first run of Cat Chat cat translators sold out in 7 days.

Following the initial success a further 50,000 units are now being produced, extra cat characters are being commissioned, and there are plans to distribute Cat Chat in Australia and the US through sister stores Petbarn and Petco.