WHISKAS are on a mission to end cat homelessness by 2030. But with cat shelters in New Zealand at breaking point, they needed to find new potential pet parents who were willing to add a cat to their household.

But cats have stiff competition you may have heard of…dogs. Everyyyone wants a dog. In fact 1/3 of households worldwide have one. Yet, 33% of adopted dogs are returned the shelters by owners who weren’t prepared for the commitment they require. So, while many people might like to think of themselves as dog people, their one-bedroom, urban working lives just aren’t ready for one.

Enter the cat.

Everyone wants a dog. But people’s lives have changed in ways that don’t always align with responsible dog ownership. More than ever we’re living in apartments, giving up WFH, loving the idealism of dog ownership, without the commitment. Search data reflects this, with people searching for impossibly low-maintenance dogs: that don’t need exercise, training, or can stay home alone, inside a small apartment.

The perfect dog doesn’t exist. So, WHISKAS created it – The Meowzer. A new breed of dog designed to get more cats adopted.

By rebranding shelter cats as Meowzers, we showed the world that everything they’re looking for in a dog, can be answered by a cat.

Wherever people searched for dogs, they met the Meowzer instead. By cross-referencing their digital footprint and search terms we intercepted searches for dogs and presented the Meowzer. Our site then matched adopters with the perfect shelter cat for their lifestyle.

We analysed the types of dogs' people were looking for, how and where they were searching for them - Google, TikTok and pet-platforms specifically. We found searches for impossibly perfect dogs such as ‘dog breeds that can be left alone’ and ‘dogs that don’t bark’ have nearly doubled in the past year, with keyword search volume platforms predicting these to increase another 20 – 25% by the end of this year.

This was our opportunity.

This insight enabled us to find a new way to talk to our audience, and better yet, a new place to talk to our audience. Leveraging digital behavioural signals, we created an omnichannel targeting approach – talking to those people who are actively looking for a dog that doesn’t exist.

With every search for an unrealistic dog came a chance to intercept that picky dog searcher with with the suggestion of a Meowzer instead.

To get dog lovers to reconsider a cat, we infiltrated dog social media. To launch the new breed, we did the unthinkable: we got the world’s biggest dog content creator to post about a cat, for the first time.

Cat owners were recruited to share the positives of their Meowzers on social media.

Dog owners were asked to share the realities of owning a dog, and suggest a Meowzer to those who aren’t up to the care a dog requires.

In search, we overlayed users’ digital footprint with their search behaviour to targeted them with a dog that was everything they were searching for- The Meowzer.

The campaign was supported with traditional and digital OOH in contextual locations.

All touchpoints led users to the Meowzer website, where a smart matching algorithm matched users with the most suitable adoptable cat in a shelter near them.

The Meowzer is a win-win for dogs and cats, by ensuring dogs end up in homes that can meet their needs, while overflowing cat shelters can find new loving homes for cats.

-11.9 million impressions, with 8.05M of those occurring on TikTok & Meta.

- 25x increase in cat consideration

- Meowzer videos were viewed over 7.6M times (in a country of 5M people), with #Meowzer influencer content responsible for 88% of those views.

And overall saw a 27% increase in adoption.