“Cats go crazy for this treat”—any pet brand could write that line. Instead of saying it in words, Dreamies (Mars’s cat snack) turned it into a swarm of cats climbing the city’s buildings. Rather than fitting it inside a flat billboard, it let them spill out of the billboard. In this single move—where the ad becomes not a “picture” but “an incident happening right there”—lies a “template” that works especially well for small and midsize companies with limited exposure budgets. Let’s break it down step by step.
What happened
In 2026, Dreamies rolled out an OOH (out-of-home) campaign it called “Ad Attack” in London’s Shoreditch (Kingsland Road, Quaker Street, and more). Toward billboards bearing a giant Dreamies pack, life-sized cats climbed from rooftops up drainpipes and scaffolding, about to pounce—and these figures were made as handcrafted FRP (fiber-reinforced plastic) sculptures and installed here and there on actual buildings.
The cats were sculpted by 3D-scanning the very posture of a cat “hunting for Dreamies,” and each one was finished by hand-painting. These are not flat illustrations inside a billboard. Within the scale of the city, life-sized cats had “invaded.” Production was by adam&eveDDB London. Industry media like The Drum, LBB, and Muse by Clios covered it as “advertising of the moment.”
Why it worked
The trick lies in one point: it took a well-known, exaggerated truth—”how badly customers want your product”—and, rather than keeping it within the frame of a billboard, made it crawl through real space as a three-dimensional object.
A flat ad, however flashy, gets processed as “something that happens inside an ad.” But the moment it jumps out of the billboard frame and clings to a real building, it becomes not an “ad” but “an incident happening right in front of you.” Passers-by do a double-take and, still puzzled—”why is a cat climbing the wall?”—point their phones. That one shot spreads without adding a single yen of ad spend. And the sheer volume of such elaborately crafted sculptures itself reads as the brand’s confidence—”this company means it.” It is far more eloquent than writing “very popular” in words.
How a small business can use this
“We don’t have a giant billboard budget”—true. But strip it to the structure and scale doesn’t matter. Take how badly customers want your product or service, and instead of confining it to a flat flyer or banner, let it “spill out” into real space.
Take manufacturing or on-site work. Instead of putting a photo of a machine on a billboard, attach to the site hoarding a three-dimensional panel where a life-sized excavator claw appears to break through the temporary fence from the inside, looking “mid-demolition.” Passers-by stop—”wait, is it breaking?” Or hiring. Instead of writing “there’s a war for talent” on a job listing, place at a joint recruiting-fair booth a 3D object of multiple company logos playing tug-of-war over a single candidate.
The common thread is not leaving the claim as a “picture,” but placing it in space as a real object. Just step one pace out of the billboard frame, and the ad starts carrying itself.
In summary
What Dreamies did was hit “hugely popular”—an obvious claim—not with words but with a three-dimensional object. Step one pace beyond the billboard frame, and the ad becomes an “incident,” and passers-by become the photographers. Even if you are not a global brand, a small business that has a “real space” like a worksite or storefront can, if anything, reproduce this template more easily.
At ASTER, we break down more than 100 talked-about ads to the structure of “why it worked,” and translate that into your industry. How could you turn your own “obvious strength” into three dimensions in space? Shall we take stock together?
(We have explainer materials on these structures and a collection of past cases ready. Feel free to get in touch.)
