-We learned that 60% of millennials own a cherished pet

-We presented them with a haunting fact: cats and dogs whose owners smoke are 2x as likely to get cancer. If smoking = no cats, and no cats = no cat videos, the internet – which is fueled by cat videos – would truly experience a #CATmageddon.

-We know that 44% of teens who start smoking do so because of smoking images that they see in movies. So when we learned that teens, on average, were spending more time playing video games – which feature smoking in unprecedented frequency – than watching movies, we knew we needed to reach this audience.

-To make our message stick, we had to let gamers do what they do best – play. A gamified live stream would allow gamers to experience and interact with our fact about pets and smoking in a familiar way

-We were banking on the fact that our millennial audience – lovers of cat videos – would be willing to spend four hours playing with live cats on their devices. But we scheduled the livestream for #NationalPetDay to drive even more traffic to the site, capitalizing on a hashtag that trended on social for almost the entire day.

-To attract audience participation, we gave the kittens toys, beds, and areas to jump around and play. Viewers voted in the chat window on new toys or elements to add to the kittens’ environment – yarn balls, laser pointers, ribbons, etc.

-Every 30 minutes, our #CATmageddon ad would play on the screen, and when the livestream tuned back in, one cat would be (playfully) removed. By the end of the stream, all of the cats were gone, showing a world that could exist if our viewers didn’t get on board to end.

-Increasing awareness of our ads is critical because we know that youth exposed to truth ads are 70% less likely to smoke cigarettes in the next year. In the month following the livestream, awareness of our ad among teens ages 15- to 21-years-old had increased by 10%.

-Getting gamers to tune in was the first hurdle, but if we couldn’t get them to care about our message, we failed. We wanted to increase traffic to our website by 10% in the week following the livestream. In just four days after the livestream, traffic to the site had increased by 15%.

-With more than 35K comments, a sentiment report showed 98% positive sentiment – considerably higher than our 75% goal.

-The livestream generated more than 655K total views, which was 173% higher than their normal livestream viewership of 240K total views. This more than tripled our expectations.