Whiskas turns its missing pack cat into a national lost-pet locator — 124 cats saved

A temporary change in product sourcing meant Kazakhstan's Whiskas packs arrived in a 'universal' design without the brand's striped cat. Shoppers who saw the familiar cat on smuggled packs and a faceless cat on the new ones assumed the faceless pack was counterfeit, and trust and sales fell. With almost no media budget, Whiskas could not afford the kind of campaign that would normally explain the pack.

Instead of explaining, Whiskas said its cat had 'run away' — and the runaway-pet insight was real: 36% of cats run away at least once, 84% of Kazakh owners had worried about it or lived it, and 62% of runaway cats never return. The brand gave up its 'sacred' ad space to lost pets and built Whiskas loCATor, a people-powered search service with Ogency, JAM and CITIX plus partners Magnum, the DOOH operator and the 2GIS mapping service.

An owner who loses a cat sends a photo to a Telegram chatbot mini-app; within a minute a video is generated and geo-targeted to the disappearance area across digital billboards, in-store screens, taxi displays, the city map, vet clinics, cafés, local shops and community phones. Any passer-by who sees a cat can photograph it and AI identifies the cat and alerts its owner — turning every resident into a rescuer.

The results were both social and commercial: 124 cats saved in three months, a 12,000+ member search community, 160+ media and blogger mentions, 31M+ impressions and 100% organic reach on $0 paid media, while Whiskas sales rose 28% in top partner retailers and the DOOH partner saw +37% demand for geo-targeted campaigns. The project won Epica 2025 Gold in Food and continued after the familiar pack returned.