Sheba is a challenger cat food brand with a tiny share of voice. To launch ‘New Gravy Indulgence’, we engaged pet parents by tapping into one of the biggest sources of entertainment in America - sports.

‘The Gravy Race’, a sporting event called by Ian Eagle 2022 Sportscaster of the Year, brought together eight cats with the biggest following across social media to see who could lick the product the fastest.

16.5 million people watched the event organically - beating March Madness average viewership by almost 6m. We tripled our online share of voice, and sold 18% more product than planned.

This work ran in the US where sports are a proud part of the American identity. It was a purposeful decision to lean heavily into both the traditional and digital tropes that fans recognise.

We launched the campaign while March Madness - America’s most watched basketball - tournament was at its peak, piggybacking on this cultural moment to put Sheba front of mind for sports fans.

We partnered withIan Eagle - 2022 Sportscaster of the year - to call the race, giving us an iconic voice commentating all the racing action.

We featured avatars of our feline racers in the trailer to give them sporting profiles and we created a ‘race track’ of Gravy Indulgence, all helping to capture the imagination of Americans at the height of March Madness

We also employed America’s most famous cats with followers numbering in the 10s of millions, instantly recognisable to sports fans and cat parents alike.

With only 3% of the total cat food market, Sheba is practically unknown in the US.

So when we were tasked with launching Gravy Indulgence Entrees on social, with one single proof point - 70% gravy, we knew success would depend on punching above our weight.

We’d need to steal attention from our bigger spending, more established competitors.

But with a fractional 8% share of online voice, a miniscule social following, and far less total spend than our competitors, it made it difficult to capture the attention of an audience naturally suspicious of branded content.

We had to find an unexpected and entertaining way to show our audience that Sheba Gravy Indulgence is ‘What Cats Want’.

We would only have one shot at virality - to achieve it organically we had to make sure the conditions were perfect.

We leveraged March Madness, the annual basketball tournament which in 2023 drove 56m to create a bracket to predict the winner of a tournament filled with upsets.

We hijacked this event by creating our own equally high-tension, unpredictable tournament but this time with cats and gravy instead of hoops.

To attract sports fans and cement our link to college hoops, we partnered with 2024’s championship game commentator - Ian Eagle.

Next we needed our contestants, eight of the world's most famous cats, each with their own unique, dedicated communities numbering in the 10s of millions.

But we knew that just speaking to these communities wasn’t enough - we needed to galvanise them by pitching them against each other to accelerate engagement and supercharge our position in the algorithm.

We launched The Gravy Race, a world-first sporting event where our cats went head to head in a knock-out style tournament to see who could lick up a line of gravy the fastest.

It was a product demonstration of epic proportions, piggy-backing on America’s March Madness, America’s most watched basketball tournament alongside eight of the internet’s biggest cat-fluencers and their combined following of just shy of 48m - as they went head to head to see who could finish their line of Sheba Gravy Indulgence first.

By exploding out a feline truth, that cats are avid lickers who love nothing more than licking gravy, we were able to turn a simple product demonstration campaign into an epic competition headlined by Ian Eagle, 2022 Sportscaster of the year, which got cat parents to engage with a new product launch like never before, en masse.

Our cats piqued interest with behind the scenes training videos. Then we released a teaser fronted by Ian Eagle to show scale and build anticipation.

With our communities excited but siloed, we launched the heats as collaboration posts on Instagram uniting our audiences to support their favourites.

On TikTok races were bolstered with Story Selector units and a Creator Challenge to inspire people to race at home. Those who thought they could beat our winners could try with TikTok duets.

We supported this with organic content including countdowns, polls, comment highlights, and more. To ensure engagement, no DM was left unread or unresponded, no clever comment went without plaudits.

As the final got closer, pet stores cheered on local heroes Puff and Venus. The final was streamed live in Times Square, on Instagram and TikTok. We even caught the attention of Pubity who shared it with their audience of 38m.

The tournament was watched by millions

Over 16.5m people watched organically - beating March Madness average viewership by almost 6m. Our final alone was watched over 7 million times organically.

It smashed industry benchmarks

The race saw an average engagement rate of 10.67% across Tik Tok and Instagram, more than triple the industry standard.

We tripled our online share of voice from 8% to 25%

7% of which was stolen from Fancy Feast, our direct and much bigger competitor. Sheba became the biggest individual wet cat food brand online.

And the event was covered by multiple big media outlets

Meaning our epic product demonstration was seen 922 million times.

But most importantly, our cat-licking competition drove sales of Sheba Gravy Indulgence

We increased sales by 18% - selling 850,000 packs of Sheba, making it the most successful launch of its kind in the market over the past three years.