Real fish or canned food? ProDiet touts authenticity with eye-catching billboard

Pet food brand ProDiet has rolled out a quirky OOH campaign playing on the idea of seafood and touting its unique selling point of using authentic seafood in its canned goods. The billboard showcases a fisherman fishing up a can of ProDiet wet cat food instead of the typical fish and seafood consumers would expect. 

The campaign runs on five billboards at different strategic locations - Federal Highway, North-South Expressway, Bentong Toll, Karak Highway, Tapah interchange ASKL and Plus Highway. Mae Lee, assistant marketing manager of Pet World Nutrition, ProDiet's parent company, told A+M that these are main expressways with strategic high traffic sites, and will thus increase product recognition while maximising exposure. The campaign will also run on digital platforms.

According to Lee, the creative concept of the billboard was derived from ProDiet's promise of 100% real seafood in its products, where real pieces of fish are offered with the wet cat food products. She explained that the idea was created by the brand's creative advisor, and executed by photography agency Wizard Photography. 

"We have been doing this campaign for some time, and the objective of this campaign has always been driving brand awareness and recall that ProDiet is a cat food brand that provides 100% Real Seafood in our wet cat food categories," Lee said. It also aims to constantly drive brand awareness and recall through different creative and innovative ways.

In fact, for the past 16 years, the brand has been constantly marketing the tagline "ProDiet - 100% Real Seafood" through creative visuals, and actively changes them once or twice a year.

The visuals include a cat in the canned food; a chopping board that brings out the freshness of the fish from canned cat food; a canned food that symbolises a fish in the aquarium; a bear catching ProDiet cat canned food; and an eagle catching fresh canned food from the sea. In doing so, Lee told A+M that ProDiet is consistent in highlighting the freshness, delicacy, and quality cat food products that it provides to cats through its visual campaigns. 

Meanwhile, ProDiet worked with Reprise Digital last year to create a film from the perspective of cats demanding real seafood from their owners. It was part of the Kami Nak 100% Makanan Laut! (We Want Real Seafood) campaign and was released across all digital platforms. 

The film and microsite messaging portrayed the cats leaving threatening messages for their owners demanding real seafood, meeting in a cat parliament (Parlimeow), with protest slogans including "nine lives matter" and tips and tricks for their fellow cats to learn how to deal with owners’ non-compliance to real food requests.

CEO of ProDiet, PY Choy, said previously that the brand was excited by the enthusiasm of the Reprise team to challenge this idea of 100% Real Seafood. He added: "What better way to show this off than through the cats? This quirky idea of cats not getting the real deal and standing up to their owners was very compelling, with the campaign having potential for further legs down the line to show the aftereffects of this cat uprising". 

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