Whiskas is in a transitional period. After building the “Feed Curiosity” platform, which focuses on nurturing that trait in cats, it’s time for the next step. Whiskas has taken on the task of extending the brand’s cultural action to humans as well. Now, it’s going to use cats’ curiosity to encourage curiosity in humans.

We developed the world’s first personal assistant that responds with questions instead of answers. MIA, inspired by the curiosity of cats, has come to nurture children’s curiosity. Once it’s connected to the internet, a motion sensor activates the questions whenever a child goes by. The questions are pitched at a variety of levels of difficulty and were designed for young people. MIA speaks two languages: Portuguese and English.

To implement Whiskas’ strategy of using cats’ curiosity to nurture curiosity in people, we focused on the only humans who still have a knack for it: kids. MIA was distributed to influencers with children and feline curiosity-themed pages. The influencers began interacting with MIA immediately, and requests on social media for MIA to be sold commercially are coming in to this day.

MIA was developed with artificial intelligence powered by Google. With a playful design, she speaks two languages, English and Portuguese, and poses dozens of interesting questions. Her body is a 3D printed design based on the shape of a cute kitten, and her feminine voice sounds vaguely feline. With her lively approach, she turns education and curiosity-building into playtime. The first prototypes were delivered to influencers across a variety of fields so that they could use them to play with their kids. Their followers reacted immediately, and requests to make MIA commercially available have been pouring in since the first promo videos were released. Now, Whiskas is working to cut costs and incorporate user feedback in order to start sales.

The first influencers who received a MIA posted about the device and talked about the importance of nurturing kids’ curiosity. Public awareness of Whiskas’ brand message rose considerably, and MIA got major coverage from tech and education websites. Online, people reacted immediately: requests to make MIA commercially available have been pouring in ever since the first promo videos were released.

• 1,242% increase in followers

• +680% engagement on social media

• 18x more visits to Whiskas’ website via the brand’s Instagram

Source: Instagram Insights and Google Analytics.