-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.

-In 2016, truth® set out to continue stoking outrage toward tobacco companies amongst teens – a proven method of reducing the teen smoking rate. The problem: teens spend little time caring about tobacco. They do, however, spend a lot of time gaming – an environment filled with smoking imagery, which has been shown to influence teen smoking. Armed with the fact that smoking causes cancer in pets, truth hacked the gaming space and created an interactive, gamified livestream where viewers manipulated the environment of live kittens – yes, real cats – showing gamers that human decisions (like smoking) directly affect

-truth’s core target is 15-21 year-olds because we know that nearly 90% of adult smokers begin while in their teens, and two-thirds become regular, daily smokers before they reach the age of 19.

-Among the many passion points of this generation, gaming is huge. The Pew Research Teen Update noted that 72% of teens play video games.

-We chose Twitch – a popular live gaming platform that allows gamers to interact with other users while live casting their games – to host our livestream. Twitch has attracted more than 100 million unique video viewers since it’s 2011 founding.

-To accomplish our overarching goal, our livestream needed to do three things: tangibly demonstrate how cats are affected by choices like smoking; generate high engagement with the Twitch audience in the chat window throughout the stream; and send viewers to thetruth.com to enlist in the cause to end smoking for good.

-In 2016, engaging teens in a conversation about tobacco isn’t easy. Somewhere between scare tactics and public health PSAs, their ears have learned to tune out the subject. And although the teen cigarette smoking rate is down to 6%, millions of teens still smoke, and young teens are initiating in new ways every day. truth strives to make the issue relevant to teens by connecting smoking to the things they care about most – like their friends, relationships, and even their pets.

-truth’s ultimate mission is to achieve a culture where youth and young adults reject tobacco. Research has shown that awareness of truth’s ads decreases a teen’s likelihood of smoking. So, we set four goals for this integration:

-5% increase in ad awareness

-10% increase in unique visitors to thetruth.com

-75% positive sentiment from viewers

-Meet or surpass the benchmark views for similar livestreams on Twitch