In the course of our research, we discovered that credit card companies sometimes accidentally send credit cards to family pets. Inspired by this fact, we made a short mockumentary film created specifically for online viewership about a dog that accidentally receives a credit card.

To tell our story, we featured a series of real experts, including a prominent Canadian personal finance author, a well-respected clinical psychiatrist, and one of the top veterinarians in Toronto and put their interviews alongside the semi-fictionalized storyline of Max, an eight-year-old Australian Shepherd with a spending problem. By pairing real, credible experts with one very talented canine performer, we were able to highlight the serious consequences of credit card debt in a charming, entertaining manner that remained grounded in the real world.

The two-minute online film was uploaded to Twitter, YouTube and Facebook. The release of the film was then supported by a comprehensive digital campaign including YouTube masthead takeovers on day 1 and day 11 of the campaign, a series of Buzzfeed articles on pets with debt problems, a sequence of Instagram posts featuring photos and GIFs from the film, and a listing on IMDB (The Internet Movie Database). This was supplemented by a series of unpaid posts across the brand’s social media channels, the reach of which were amplified by leveraging the sizable fan base of our canine star Cohen. Online efforts were complimented by offline promotion via movie posters that were displayed in Cineplex movie theatres across Canada.

Despite a small digital media budget, Pets with Credit was Interac’s most successful digital campaign ever:

+ More than 3.4 million views to date across Facebook and YouTube.

+ Over 50% organic viewership.

+ 30% growth in new subscribers to Interac’s YouTube channel.

Perhaps most impressively, where online advertising by financial entities is most often met with a wave of cynicism and vitriol, out of more than 3000 Facebook comments, virtually none were negative. Even on YouTube, the video maintained a 99% positive like to dislike rate—a metric virtually unheard of on a platform known for its negativity.