SABMiller's San Juan Asks 'Where's My Otorongo?'

From black rhinos to orang-utangs, the official list of endangered animals makes for depressing reading - but some could be heading the way of the dodo without us even realising it.

Take the otorongo (for those scratching their heads and asking 'what the heck's one of them?', it's a jaguar native to the Peruvian Amazon). Despite being a traditional symbol of strength, energy and wisdom, deforestation and poaching have resulted in rapidly dwindling numbers, but the public and the authorities have been seemingly oblivious to the scale of the problem.

Step forward local beer purveyor San Juan, a brand with a strong connection to the otorongo - the big cat has featured on its logo for decades. To raise awareness of the issue, the SABMiller-owned brand teamed up with FCB Mayo Lima on a quirky outdoor campaign. 

Launched during Peru's popular February Carnaval, Where's My Otorongo? saw the familiar jaguar image removed from bottle labels and replaced with a dog, a pig, a cow and even (gasp!) a rooster. Mirroring the actual numbers left in the wild, only 6,000 bottles with the otorongo logo were produced.

Needless to say, the disappearing act didn't go down well with the locals, as can be seen in the video above. In the region's biggest city, Pucallpa, people even took to the streets to demand the return of the jaguar logo. 

As a result, a petition launched by San Juan for the otorongo to be officially declared a natural heritage of the region garnered hundreds of signatures, eventually leading to a formal commitment from the authorities to implement an adequate legal framework to protect the animal.