For halloween, we made a slasher film starring a group of teen mice. It was an interactive Facebook Live event where you were the killer. We called it Facebook Not Live. Since we’ve had so much fun killing mice in this campaign in the past, we wanted the audience to take part in it this time.

Like all movies, it was hyped with a trailer and posters, and shared across shared across social media the week before Halloween. We featured all the usual horror movie tropes in our mouse cast, including a ditzy cheerleader, a dumb jock, and a nosy sheriff. This generated enormous interest - the trailer alone received 2.2 million views in just one week.

On Halloween, the movie premiered in real time on Facebook Live. Just as a Dead Mouse character was about to be killed, the story paused and viewers had 20 seconds to vote on how that mouse should die. And die they did, by falling down wells, torching by flamethrower, even getting eaten by disco-dancing bears. But ultimately, nothing killed as quickly as Tomcat bait.

We had a blockbuster opening - in total, we reached 2.3 million unique users. 21% of our movie viewers actively participated in murdering our mice, choosing how they would die through over 1,600 comments. As Andrew Keller, Global Creative Director of Facebook Creative Shop noted: “Tomcat brilliantly used the possibility of real-time audience participation to create something fun and cool.” Most impressively, we increased our Facebook fanbase by 58% - giving us a new audience to keep sharing Dead Mouse Theatre with.

People lust for blood when they see a mouse. They don’t just want to kill them, they want to dance on their graves. For years, we’ve positioned Tomcat, as a rodent control brand for rodent victors, rather than victims. Our strategy has been to ask: what should you do with all the dead mice you kill? Our answer: Dead Mouse Theatre, a series of theatrical vignettes starring (fake) dead mice as the actors. This Halloween, we gave our Dead Mouse actors a bigger platform - a horror movie on Facebook Live. The twist: you the viewer were the murderer. You had to choose how you wanted to kill our dead mice, live. We called the event Facebook Not Live.

People aren’t sure what rodent control brand works best. And they didn’t know our product kills mice faster than any other brand. How do we get people to pick this product up off a shelf in a sea of other brands? On social, we had to make something that was breakthrough and shareable during prime rodent season.