In recent years, animal shelters have been flooded with record numbers of homeless cats. Hill’s Pet Nutrition has always been a staunch supporter of shelters and shelter pets, so when we saw our animal welfare partners overrun with cats looking for love, we knew we needed to help.
Our idea stemmed from two goals: first, to raise awareness for specific adoptable cats and encourage cat adoption in general; and second, to position Hill’s as a brand that prioritizes cats. Hill’s is often thought of as a dog-centric brand, and we wanted to shift the messaging to show that we care deeply about our feline friends, too.
We found the ideal opportunity in an unlikely place — a niche, nonsensical holiday that catered perfectly to our intended audience of cat lovers (and potential cat owners): Cat World Domination Day. On June 24, cat lovers take to the internet to post their best lovably evil cat memes. By capitalizing on this unique holiday, we could put Hill’s at the forefront of online cat conversations.
What better way to celebrate Cat World Domination than to stage a feline takeover of the Hill’s Pet U.S. Instagram account? By “hacking” into our social accounts, a handful of evil cats would have a platform to achieve world domination — plus help adoptable felines find new domains.
Our first challenge came as we tackled the tone of the campaign. Although the point of Cat World Domination Day is to depict cats as evil, we still wanted to portray the cats as lovable so they could be adopted. We worked with our creative team to find this balance by weaving a story of cats who have a knack for hacking and are dedicated to their cause but lack some crucial components — graphic design skills, the ability to replicate Hill’s voice, and, well, thumbs. We chose to make the clowder’s grasp of the English language hit-or-miss, and their attempts to sound intimidating came across as more goofy and endearing.
Once we nailed down the voice of the feline hackers, we collaborated with our clients to identify three animal shelters around the U.S. that were game for partnering with us — two that would send us photos and profiles for a few adoptable felines, and one that let us film footage of their cats and kittens. Here, we were faced with another obstacle: We realized that to make sure the cats we featured weren’t already adopted when we posted their profiles, we would need to wait until right before the campaign went live to select the cats. To accommodate this unique challenge, we prepared as much of the campaign as possible in advance, then worked quickly to turn the cat profiles around before the takeover went live.
The campaign came to life in 3 stages:
Phase 1: Clues & Claws
In the days leading up to Cat World Domination Day, we dropped teasers that something was off on our Instagram. From the hackers' To-Do list conveniently misplaced by the cats to a hijacked dog post vandalized into a PSA on the importance of cat treats, we laid the groundwork for an epic feline takeover.
Phase 2: Cat World Domination
On June 24, the cats attacked! With a hacked dog Reel, the cats announced their nefarious intentions. Then came a list of demands, an evil-overlord personality quiz, and most importantly, profiles of adoptable cats looking for new domains to rule (introduced with appropriately mischievous bios). And for one day only, our Instagram profile photo changed to include a cat hovering above the Hill’s logo.
Phase 3: The Feline Finale
But all good things must come to an end, so the next day, Hill's Instagram was safely returned to the control of our social managers. The clowder of cats responsible for the hacking released a not-quite-sincere apology note reminiscent of celebrity apologies commonly mocked online, and the cats ominously assured our followers that they wouldn’t make the same mistakes next year.
The cats might not have achieved world domination, but they absolutely dominated Instagram. Our followers went wild for the lovably evil clowder of cat hackers, and the campaign attracted attention quickly — gaining more than 50,000 impressions in just one week. The apology note was particularly beloved; it set the new record as Hill’s most-liked organic post since the account was relaunched in 2019. Users attracted by the apology note checked out the Hill’s profile to see what the fuss was about, resulting in some pretty impressive stats:
The PR team capitalized on the campaign’s success and pitched this story to consumer pet reporters, and they loved it! PetHelpful covered the story, which was picked up by Yahoo! Lifestyle and AOL. Each story linked back to posts on Instagram and TikTok, helping to further spread the campaign’s reach.
The piqued attention definitely accomplished our goal of raising awareness for Hill’s love for cats. But most importantly, the campaign flooded our shelter partners with attention for their adoptable cats, helping both featured and unfeatured cats find homes — and bringing cats one step closer to true world domination.
