What happens when you stick a strip of tape on a cat? You get some pretty amusing cat dance moves, as seen in this online video from Kotex in China.
The spot was designed to prove a point about comfort and sanitary napkins. "Women are as sensitive as cats," the spot from Ogilvy & Mather Shanghai says, and Kotex provides "worry-free protection that pleases the senses.
"In case you were worried, no cats were harmed during the making of the video. What looks like white duct-tape is actually a "gentle, non-adhesive tape that did not hurt the cat or remove any hairs or fur," wrote Bamboo Zhuang, creative director at Ogilvy, Shanghai, in an email. (The team says it tested different tape types on themselves first.)
The spot has been viewed 1 million times on various platforms in two weeks, Ogilvy said. Along with the cat video, Kotex also did another spot comparing men to sanitary napkins (see below).
"Love and cats are both big topics that emerged in our consumer research sessions, so we decided to cast cats and also used the angle of a perfect man in our videos," the creative director wrote.
Kimberly-Clark's Kotex has been active on Chinese social media, often posting fun, lighthearted content as it tries to drive conversation on an awkward content. It previously enlisted the help of a giggly, fictional online character named An Xiaoqi to talk about menstruation to young women.
Kotex has competition from cheaper local sanitary-napkin brands in China, but not much from tampons -- they're still an uncommon sight in Chinese shops.
Incidentally, it seems now is a good time for Asian branded cat videos. In Japan, Pizza Hut just released a video series that imagines uniform-wearing cats running the show at a restaurant. They even vacuum and take out the trash.