Seeing past the fluff

Background

Around 50% of all pets in the Nordics are overweight or obese. But pet owners don’t really see it and may even think that their pet’s chubby appearance is cute. According to a study by the Liverpool Weight Management Clinic, between 44% and 72% of pet owners underestimate the weight status of their pet.

Here too, pet owners struggle to understand the true impact that excess weight can have on their pet. However, overweight and obesity in pets can have serious health consequences for the pets. We needed to make pet parents aware of the dangers of overweight in their pets help them see the early signs.

Task

To that end, we needed to generate both brand- and qualified awareness about how a healthy weight is key to a pet’s general health and well-being.

Solution

We created a film featuring both cats and dogs. To get the message across we communicated via 4 focus areas: Shape, Activity, Portioning, Growth. We see cats and dogs playing and having a good time and convey that these all have something in common: overweight, and then cut to one of Royal Canin’s veterinarians who explains about overweight and the science behind it and also provide insight and useful advice about what to do about it. That way the film represented both the familiar and the unknown.

The film ran on Facebook and Instagram and was supported by short assets on Facebook, Instagram and Pinterest with separate scenes of the cats and dogs and advice from the film with the overall CTA: How to spot overweight in your pet. Additionally, we sent out an e-mail and ran a separate influencer track based on the themes and advice featured in the film. The film thus pro-vided us with a large battery of content putting focus on a problem that pets owners tend not to see.