Teens stop #CATmageddon; Enlist pets to send their message to Big Tobacco

truth®, one of the largest and most successful national youth tobacco prevention campaigns, is asking teens (and their pets) to make their mark—literally—on the issue of tobacco, and scare the piss out of Big Tobacco by signing a #PEEtition.

Join the #PEEtition!

In February, truth warned of a world without cat videos, or #CATmageddon, illuminating the fact that cats and dogs are twice as likely to get cancer if their owners smoke. The threat of #CATmageddon proved that people love their pets when the Internet reacted in a BIG way. More than 185 million people watched the videos and viewers were twice as likely to search “quit smoking” on that site or Google after viewing the ad. Also, youth exposed to the ad were more than 16 percent more likely to respond that they would not smoke when asked, compared to a group of similar Google users who did not watch the ad. If the viewer watched the ad three or more times, this number jumped to more than 34 percent.

#PEEtition continues the conversation with teens with a simple task: snap a photo of a pet peeing and share the image online with the hashtag #PEEtition. The ultimate goal? Get Big Tobacco to admit that smoking kills pets, because while the teen smoking rate is down to 7 percent, tobacco remains the number one cause of preventable death in the United States.

“#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.”

#PEEtition is the latest extension of truth’s Finish It campaign, which launched in August 2014 and aims to empower smokers and nonsmokers alike to make this generation the one that ends tobacco use for good. truth provides teens with the facts and inspiration they need to #FinishIT once and for all. Since August 2014, the campaign has generated more than 445 million interactions, and more are engaging every day as they learn how tobacco use affects their pets, their friends, and themselves.

The Finish It campaign was created by truth's agency of record, 72andSunny. Media planning and buying is handled by Assembly, truth's media agency of record.