Edgard & Cooper co-founders Louis Chalabi and Koen Bostoen got the idea to found their premium pet food brand based on experiences with their own dogs Edgard, who suffered from bad food allergies, and Cooper, a picky eater. The solution–kibble made without the highly processed meat found in most traditional pet food–worked well for their pets.

Now the company is looking to change the way other consumers think about the category with its “They Are What They Eat” campaign by Amsterdam agency We Are Pi.

“Consumers are on autopilot,” Chalabi told Adweek. “They trust big brands they’ve known for 20 years, and their parents told them it was good. They go to the shop and buy a pet food brand and they don’t question themselves. But some consumers are really asking for more transparency. They want to know what’s inside. They want to know how the ingredients are treated and what it will do for their pets.”

The 40-second ad opens with a person pouring a bowl of cardboard chips for a sad-looking cardboard cat. An artificial dog won’t play in the yard, while another fake cat can’t stop a mouse as it crawls over cheese sitting out on the kitchen counter and even the feline’s own head.

But when poured a bowl of Edgard & Cooper kibble, the animals transform into real pets that are excited to share their love.  

“Fifty years ago, people saw pets as something that sits in the garden and gets the garbage of the house,” Chalabi said. “We are in 2023, and my dog sleeps next to me. There is a shift going on in the industry to naturalness, but not to the level we want. We need to level up our game for our pets.”

The goal of the campaign is to build brand awareness, ensure consumers know about Edgard & Cooper’s values and increase sales, with the expectation that purchasers will also become brand advocates.

While Edgard & Cooper has been using secondary research to support the value of fresh ingredients, the brand is also investing in its own research this year. The company also donates 1% of its sales revenues to the Edgard & Cooper Foundation, which supports animal welfare organizations around the world.

“Sometimes, when you’re working with scale-up businesses, the marketing challenges are just the purest. We have to be the most famous and we have to stand for something,” We Are Pi founder and CEO Alex Bennett-Grand told Adweek.