Mission Complete: Merial Educates Over 2.5 Million People On The Importance Of Vaccination Through Social Media
8 years ago 
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Campaign to keep viral cats online and not on the streets!
The Viral Cats campaign that launched the beginning of June and ran for eight weeks, has reached in excess of 2.5 million people about the importance of vaccinating UK cats.
Statistics from a leading UK pet charity revealed that 3.9 million cats in the UK are not up to date with vaccinations and 2.7 million have never been vaccinated1. Merial Animal Health created a campaign that used Facebook’s popularity to share specially created GIFs, encouraging people to ‘Not let this cat go Viral!” and speak to their vet about their cat’s health.
A special website (viralcats.co.uk) was created as a campaign hub, containing important vaccination information and useful tools such as a ‘risk checker’ quiz to quickly and easily assess if a cat may be at risk and therefore require vaccination. To encourage participation, the website hosted fun interactive elements such as the “How cat are you?” quiz testing people’s knowledge about the unique and wonderful world of cats, and a “Spot the difference” game that highlighted the difficulty of seeing the difference between a vaccinated and non-vaccinated cat with your eyes.
Claire Edmunds, vet channel marketing manager at Merial, said of the success: ‘‘We set out on a mission to educate one million people and are thrilled to have smashed this milestone and seen an increase in the number of owners visiting their vet to discuss vaccinations. A big thank you to all practices who were involved. The need to highlight the importance of vaccinations became increasingly necessary as reports suggested that 38%2 of owners did not realise the importance of vaccinating their cat on a regular basis.’’
You can still get involved and help raise awareness of the importance of vaccinations by:
1. Using the assets on your social media channels and encouraging your entire community to share
2. Liking the Facebook page – Viral Cats UK
3. Downloading the ‘Give Them Just What they Need’ Guide at practicesupport.merial.co.uk (where you will also find other exclusive materials or ask your regional Merial Territory Manager for a copy)
References:
1. PDSA PAW Report 2014
2. Survey of 1000 cat owners, September 2015
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