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Dreamies Turns Cat Treat Packaging Into a Creative Punchline
Dreamies launched 'The World's First Impenetrable Pack of Cat Treats' as a film campaign in the United Kingdom in April 2017, using a product-demonstration premise to dramatise a packaging innovation designed to resist cats' well-documented ability to locate and tear into treat packets before their owners intend them to.
The campaign sits squarely within the cat treats segment of the UK pets industry, where the brand had already established itself on a platform built around the near-irresistible pull its product exerts on cats. That irresistibility, long the emotional engine of Dreamies advertising, becomes a structural tension in this execution: if cats want the treats badly enough to raid the packet, then the packet itself becomes the only credible defence, and demonstrating its imperviousness becomes both the product claim and the comedic payoff. The campaign addresses a consumer problem that any cat owner in the United Kingdom will recognise instantly — returning to find a chewed, emptied or suspiciously relocated bag of treats — and elevates it from a domestic nuisance into a brand-worthy narrative.
The single film asset was created for Mars-owned Dreamies by adam&eveDDB, London, with creative leadership provided by Chief Creative Officer Richard Brim and a team that included Copywriter Nick Sheppard and Art Director Tom Webber, per Clapboard's production records. The campaign is catalogued in the Clapboard ad archive as a UK film campaign published in April 2017. Its positioning as 'the world's first' impenetrable pack anchors the product benefit in a superlative that is simultaneously functional and playful, consistent with the broader lifestyle register the Dreamies brand had cultivated in the mid-2010s UK market.
Dreamies built the 2017 campaign on a consumer insight rooted in feline behaviour rather than owner sentiment. Cats are motivated foragers, and their ability to identify, locate and physically breach treat packaging is a documented frustration among cat owners in the United Kingdom — one that sits at the intersection of amusement and mild inconvenience. By making the packaging itself the hero rather than the treat inside, adam&eveDDB shifted the creative argument from taste or nutrition to functional reassurance, a move that differentiates in a category where most advertising competes on appetite appeal.
The strategic context matters here. Dreamies is the United Kingdom name for Mars Incorporated's Temptations brand, as noted in Clapboard's brand lineage records, giving it the backing of one of the world's largest pet-food companies. The UK cat treats segment sits within a broader pet-food market that was experiencing healthy growth around 2017; according to Pet Food Industry, global pet-food sales were growing at approximately five percent compound annual growth rate during this period, while the cat-treat subcategory was expanding considerably faster, at approximately eleven percent compound annual growth rate, suggesting a competitive and commercially attractive moment for bold brand activity. In the United Kingdom specifically, the pet-food and pet-care market was subject to regulatory oversight under domestic food-safety legislation, per Legislation Gov Uk, reinforcing the operational seriousness behind any product or packaging claim a brand chose to make publicly.
Against this backdrop, the 'impenetrable pack' idea functions as a competitive differentiator in a segment where rivals such as Purina's Whiskas Temptations range and own-label cat treat products compete primarily on price and flavour. Positioning the pack as structurally cat-proof addresses a real consumer pain point that competitors had not publicly claimed, creating a functional moat around the brand's lifestyle identity in the UK pets category.
The film format was the natural vehicle for this campaign's ambitions. Demonstrating an 'impenetrable' treat pack requires motion, reaction and timing — qualities that static media cannot deliver with the same comedic precision. The execution relied on the inherent watchability of cats interacting with an object they cannot defeat, a premise that required careful direction to maintain comic tension without tipping into slapstick or losing the product claim beneath the entertainment.
Richard Brim served as Chief Creative Officer on the campaign, with Nick Sheppard as Copywriter and Tom Webber as Art Director, per Clapboard's production documentation. Agency Producer Rebecca Holt oversaw production, while strategic direction was provided by Planners Stuart Harrison and Gail Anderson-Brown. On the brand side, Global Brand Director Emily Dowling, Marketing Portfolio Manager Antje Liedtke and Brand Manager Yuliya Toporynska represented Mars's Dreamies team, with Business Director Jaimee Kerr, Account Director Katie Baker and Account Manager Matt Lee managing the client relationship at adam&eveDDB, as documented by Clapboard.
The creative lineage of this campaign is instructive. adam&eveDDB had previously produced the Dreamies 'Best Friends' campaign, documented in Lürzer's Archive, which depicted a cat and a chick as close companions until the prospect of food exposed the cat's predatory instincts — a piece of work that established the brand's tone of affectionate wit and animal behaviour as dramatic engine. The 2017 impenetrable pack film extended that same sensibility into a product-demonstration register, using the irresistibility platform that Dreamies had cultivated as the very reason the packaging innovation is necessary. The result is a campaign whose creative logic is self-contained and whose central joke — the pack wins — delivers both the product message and the brand character simultaneously.
No verified performance data for 'The World's First Impenetrable Pack of Cat Treats' is publicly available. No campaign-specific metrics — including view counts, brand-tracking shifts, sales uplift figures or share-of-voice data — have been documented in the public record, and no verified reviews of the campaign appear in Campaign, Ad Age, Adweek, The Drum or Contagious, per Clapboard's research. No awards for this work have been identified across the Cannes Lions, Effies, One Show, D&AD or Clio databases, as confirmed by Clapboard, talkingretail.com and dandad.org.
Structurally, however, the campaign carries several properties associated with effective FMCG film advertising in the United Kingdom. The central claim — 'the world's first impenetrable pack' — is falsifiable in the most literal, demonstrable sense, giving the film a testable premise that audiences can evaluate in real time alongside the cats on screen. The insight is universal among the target audience: cat owners in the UK do not need to be primed to understand the problem being solved. The format chosen, a single film asset, concentrates creative investment in the most shareable and emotionally resonant medium available to a consumer brand in 2017. The 'Best Friends' lineage established by adam&eveDDB also suggests the brand had creative consistency on its side, which compounds effectiveness over time even when individual campaign metrics are not publicly reported.
Clapboard scores this campaign 63 out of 100, reflecting a well-executed and strategically coherent idea that nonetheless lacks documented proof of real-world impact and sits within a creative register — animals plus packaging comedy — that, while well-crafted, does not break significantly new ground for the category.
Dreamies launched a film campaign in the United Kingdom in April 2017 positioning a redesigned treat pack as fully resistant to cats. Created by adam&eveDDB, the single-film execution dramatised cats failing to breach the packaging, turning a functional product claim into a comedic proof point for the UK pets market.
adam&eveDDB, London created the campaign. Chief Creative Officer Richard Brim led the creative team alongside Copywriter Nick Sheppard and Art Director Tom Webber. The agency had previously produced Dreamies' 'Best Friends' campaign and maintained the brand's established platform of feline irresistibility, per Clapboard's production records.
The campaign addressed cats locating and tearing open treat packets before owners intend them to. This behaviour is widely recognised among cat owners in the United Kingdom. By framing the packaging as the solution, Dreamies shifted creative focus from the treat's appeal to functional reassurance rooted in real household experience.
On the brand side, Global Brand Director Emily Dowling, Marketing Portfolio Manager Antje Liedtke and Brand Manager Yuliya Toporynska represented Dreamies. At adam&eveDDB, Business Director Jaimee Kerr and Account Director Katie Baker led client management. All credits are documented in Clapboard's campaign archive records.
No verified awards for the campaign have been identified. Clapboard, talkingretail.com and dandad.org confirm no recognised wins across Cannes Lions, Effies, One Show, D&AD or Clio databases. The campaign received a Clapboard Score of 63 out of 100, reflecting strategic coherence without documented industry recognition.
The campaign extends Dreamies' established irresistibility platform into a product-demonstration register. If cats want the treats badly enough to raid the packet, the pack becomes the only credible defence. This logic connects directly to the earlier 'Best Friends' campaign by adam&eveDDB, documented in Lürzer's Archive, sustaining creative consistency across the brand's UK lifestyle positioning.
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