Teens stopped #CATmageddon and can now enlist pets to send their message to big tobacco

Building off a wildly successful campaign to stave off #CATmageddon, the truth® campaign is launching a #PEEtition drive to pressure Big Tobacco to admit that smoking kills pets, too.

The campaign is asking youth to take pictures of their pets peeing and post those photos with the hashtag #PEEtition. Why pet urine? Among other things, some cigarettes, like pet urine, contain urea.   

The #PEEtition drive builds off the success of truth’s earlier campaign to raise awareness of the fact that pets were twice as likely to get cancer if their owners smoke. More than 185 million viewers watched the #CATmageddon videos. Viewers were twice as likely to search “quit smoking” on Google after seeing the ads. Youth who saw the ads were 16 percent more likely to say they would not smoke.  

“#CATmageddon was our most viewed ad campaign ever,“ said Robin Koval, CEO and president of Truth Initiative®, the national public health organization that directs and funds the truth campaign. “We’ve released this latest ad to celebrate our progress  while also encouraging teens and their pets to raise their paws—and legs—as a continued commitment to ending smoking for good.”