Rodent control isn’t exactly a subject people are dying to talk about. So how do you talk about your product benefit, when your benefit involves your ruthless efficiency at killing mice really fast? You take the product benefit and turn it into entertainment. That’s why we created the second edition of Dead Mouse Theater. This year, we introduced a new cast of stunt-mice, who performed amazingly fast death defying feats- like being shot through a tailpipe or slingshot through a ring of fire- before dying at top speed. On Tumblr the action continued with ongoing speedy content such as topical posts that tied to cultural events. We also drove traffic to Facebook where we continued the speed message through a series of videos called last wishes as well as speedy breaking news segments. We made action figures and mailed them to our biggest fans on social.

This work ran online video, desktop & mobile display, and social media channels (Tumblr, Facebook, and YouTube). It was timed for the fall, when mice are looking for somewhere warm to hide, and the peak season for rodent control products.

We chose Tumblr as the main hub of the campaign, as the tone of our work fit perfectly with Tumblr’s quirky content-loving audience. Our topical posts featuring speedily dying mice proved to be very popular on the platform.

Tomcat sales are up 20% this year.

Overall, the campaign has received over 110 million impressions across all digital channels, including 29.4 million impressions across our social channels. We’ve turned rodent control into a conversation, a first for the category.

Most rodent control brands focus on the fear and disgust associated with a mouse infestation. Indeed, our audience (suburban males) becomes a bloodthirsty annihilator when they confront mice - they will stop at nothing, driven by an all-consuming desire to obliterate the intruders.

Rather than wallowing in panicky hysteria, we focused on the target’s obsession with “winning”, and the glee of conquering the enemy. We rooted our creative in a truth about the product: Tomcat kills a lot of mice fast, and launched Dead Mouse Theatre, a series of theatrical vignettes and stunts starring all the (fake) dead mice we kill.

Since the introduction of our Dead Mouse Theatre campaign two years ago, fans had been sharing our mouse characters across social media - they loved each stunt and outfit change. So we decided to continue riffing off this in social, introducing new characters and backstories.

Objectives: Build national awareness of the Tomcat brand and its superior product attribute, rodent killing speed, ultimately driving sales..

Our challenge: How do you publicize a rodent control brand that looks like all the other brands on shelf, while creating conversation around a product that is too disgusting to talk about?