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

A temporary sourcing change replaced Kazakhstan's usual Whiskas packs with a faceless 'universal' design, and shoppers mistook them for counterfeits; the brand had to respond with almost no media budget.

When the cat vanished from the pack, Whiskas said it had 'run away' and gave its ad space to a real lost-pet locator instead of explaining.

Whiskas announced its striped cat had run away and handed its media space to missing pets: an owner sends a photo to a Telegram chatbot, which generates a geo-targeted alert video for DOOH billboards, retail and taxi screens, the city map app, vets, cafés and community boards; anyone who spots a cat can photograph it and AI matches it to the owner.

The case credits report 124 cats returned in three months, a search community of 12,000+, 160+ media and blogger mentions and 31M+ impressions on $0 paid media, plus +28% Whiskas sales in top partner retailers.

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.

It turned a liability into the message: the missing cat was no longer a flaw to explain but the reason to look for lost pets everywhere.

It converted brand media into a functional service, so every impression had a job — locating a real animal — rather than just building awareness.

The Telegram-to-DOOH pipeline made participation cheap and instant, letting thousands of non-owners help without downloading anything new.

It put the brand's credibility behind an urgent local problem, so the launch earned partner media, retail and tech support worth far more than its budget.

A packaging flaw can become the campaign: by making the missing cat the story and converting its own media into a public rescue service, the brand turned a weakness into participation.

The service stayed alive after production of the familiar pack resumed at the new factory, and the team kept connecting shelters, animal services and charities. The work won Epica 2025 Gold in Food for Ogency and further awards at Jolbors Central Asia 2025 and White Square 2026, and the case credits say tech-driven pet-search campaigns using outdoor media and crowdsourced data began appearing in Europe and the US soon after.