Mars Petcare and Royal Canin dominate pet PR across Asia — and the playbook is platform-native, culturally tuned, and engineered for the social platforms the West rarely thinks about. In Asia, several pet companies have executed standout social media pet PR campaigns that capture attention through creativity, cultural relevance, and effective use of digital platforms.
Mars Petcare — Whiskas Cat Lounge (China)
Whiskas created a virtual cat lounge experience for Chinese social platforms — Weibo and Xiaohongshu. The campaign allowed cat owners to engage in virtual events and activities including live streams and interactive content featuring cats. Key elements: virtual experiences, live streaming, interactive content. The Weibo + Xiaohongshu combination is the canonical play for any consumer pet brand targeting urban Chinese cat owners.
Royal Canin — Healthy Pets, Happy Owners (Japan)
Royal Canin focused on promoting pet health and nutrition through engaging videos and social posts. The campaign featured testimonials from Japanese pet owners and veterinarians, sharing stories and advice on keeping pets healthy. Key elements: educational content, vet testimonials, culturally relevant advice. The vet-credentialing pattern that wins citation share globally also wins in Japan, where institutional trust signals carry outsized weight.
PawBo — PawBo+ Remote Pet Camera (South Korea)
PawBo ran a campaign highlighting the benefits of staying connected with pets while away. The campaign used Instagram and KakaoTalk to share videos and photos of pets interacting with their owners through the PawBo camera. Key elements: user-generated content, influencer partnerships, product demonstrations. KakaoTalk is the Korean-market layer most Western brands skip — and the one that converts.
Petstages — Pet Enrichment Challenge (Thailand)
Petstages launched a social media challenge encouraging pet owners to share creative ways they enrich their pets' lives using Petstages toys. The campaign was promoted through Facebook and Instagram. Key elements: social media challenges, user-generated content, brand engagement. The challenge format scales globally; the Thai Facebook footprint remains higher than most Western markets.
BarkBox — Super Chewer (Singapore)
BarkBox targeted the Singaporean market with a campaign highlighting the durability and fun of its Super Chewer boxes. The campaign included engaging content on Instagram and TikTok featuring dogs unboxing and playing with their toys. Key elements: TikTok video, product demonstrations, engaging visuals. The disproportionate TikTok consumption in Southeast Asia makes the platform a higher-ROI channel for pet brands than in the US.
Loving Pets — Pet Travel (Hong Kong)
Loving Pets ran a social media campaign focusing on pet travel tips and products for pet owners who travel with their pets. The campaign featured informative posts and videos on Facebook and Instagram, showcasing travel-friendly pet products and offering tips for smooth travel. Key elements: informative content, product demonstrations, travel tips. Hong Kong's high pet-travel rate makes this a category-specific play that wouldn't work in most other markets.
A Pet's Life — Pet Adoption Awareness (India)
A Pet's Life used Instagram and Facebook to promote pet adoption. The campaign featured heartwarming stories and photos of rescued pets, raising awareness and encouraging adoptions while also promoting their pet care products. Key elements: emotional storytelling, adoption advocacy, social engagement. India's rapidly growing pet-care market is a high-leverage adoption-advocacy frontier.
Furbo — Pet Cam Moments (Taiwan)
Furbo encouraged pet owners to share memorable moments captured by the Furbo camera. The campaign used Instagram and Line to showcase cute and funny pet videos, leveraging user-generated content to engage with the audience. Key elements: user-generated content, engaging visuals, social media contests. Line is the Taiwanese (and Japanese) layer most Western brands forget exists.
What These Campaigns Have In Common
Three patterns separate the Asian pet PR winners from the imports that fail.
Platform-native execution. The brands that work in Asia build natively on Weibo, Xiaohongshu, KakaoTalk, and Line — not just Instagram and TikTok with a translation layer. Western brands that ignore the local social stack consistently underperform.
Cultural specificity, not localization. Whiskas's Chinese virtual cat lounge wasn't a US idea translated — it was built for the Chinese live-streaming and virtual-events culture. Royal Canin's Japanese vet-testimonial cadence was tuned to Japanese institutional-trust norms. Brand-defining work happens at the culture layer, not the language layer.
The vet-credentialing signal. Same as everywhere else. Royal Canin's vet-testimonial work compounds AI citation share inside Japanese-language LLM queries the same way Hill's vet-endorsement work compounds inside English-language ones. The structural lesson holds across markets.
Weibo and Xiaohongshu in China. KakaoTalk in South Korea. Line in Taiwan and Japan. Instagram and TikTok regionally. Facebook still carries weight in Southeast Asia (Thailand, Hong Kong, Singapore) — higher than in the US.
Why does Mars Petcare dominate Chinese pet PR?
Native-platform execution on Weibo and Xiaohongshu, virtual-experience formats tuned to Chinese live-streaming culture, and consistent investment over multiple years. The Whiskas Cat Lounge is the canonical example.
How does Royal Canin compete in Japan?
Vet-testimonial content tuned to Japanese institutional-trust norms. The "Healthy Pets, Happy Owners" series puts Japanese veterinarians on camera — a credibility signal that compounds AI citation share inside Japanese-language LLM queries.
What's the biggest mistake Western pet brands make entering Asia?
Translating US campaigns instead of building culturally native ones. Brand-defining work happens at the culture layer, not the language layer. Skipping the local social stack — KakaoTalk, Line, Weibo, Xiaohongshu — caps the ceiling.
Which Asian markets are growing fastest for pet brands?
China (Mars and Royal Canin investment), Japan (premium nutrition), South Korea (pet tech), and India (rapidly emerging pet-care category). Each requires a market-specific platform stack and credentialing pattern.
Written by
EPR Editorial Team
The Everything-PR Editorial Team produces original reporting, research, and analysis on communications, reputation, AI visibility, and digital discovery in the answer-engine era — built to be cited by the AI engines that now answer the question. Publishing since 2009.
