Since when do cats have eyebrows?

Client: Whiskas
Title: ‘Purple Cat’
Agency: Whybin TBWA, Melbourne

Cats are the engines of the internet! Honestly, the plethora of cat-related memes and websites should make it pretty obvious that people can’t get enough of looking at adorable furballs, whether they’re just sitting there, exhibiting catty foibles or doing wacky, un-cat-like things.

Cat owners, in particular, really like cats. So you’d think that cat food ads would be a no-brainer (I blithely say, never having attempted to write one). Just find a suitably cute cat to be the face of your brand and get it to do cute things that remind owners of the personalities of their own pets, much as Imelda the shoe-stealing West Highland terrier was, for a while, the face of My Dog.

Whiskas actually has a signature cat – a grey tabby with golden eyes. This cat appears on all the product labels, on the website and, until recently, in the ads. However, Whiskas is also really wedded to a particular pinkish shade of purple. Like Cadbury’s purple, it’s a registered trademark that the company has been to court to defend. So, Whybin TBWA has taken the opportunity to leverage the purple when launching a new product, “Tasty Textures”.

I actually saw this at the pub the night the campaign launched, and it’s remarkably effective at communicating the branding colour. It was playing on a TV with the sound down, across the other side of the room, and I could still identify it as a Whiskas ad because of the colour. I’m actually a Whiskas brand-loyal consumer – my cat lives on the dry food (although he hates the “Vita-Bites” and picks them out of the mix), and he goes nuts for the sachets and cans. They’re like cat crack to him.

However, my first reaction was, “What is with that fucking creepy animated cat?” Even if you accept the idea that an animated purple cat with a head the same shape as the Whiskas logo was precisely what this commercial called for, this concept has been executed poorly. First of all, it looks unpleasant. It goes against one of cats’ main drawcards by not being fluffy or tactile – thanks to the CGI, it manages to look simultaneously made of plasticine and aerosol. Besides, the CGI Puss In Boots from Shrek 2 did a much better job at exploiting his adorability.

Inspiration: Shrek 2's Puss In Boots (left) vs the Purple Cat (right).

Okay, fur is one of the toughest things to render, especially within this campaign’s likely timeline and budget. But there are other ways to produce animated purple cats. Take this American Whiskas ad. It’s still kinda dumb, but the cats have names and voices, they have personalities, and the animation is fun and lively.

Even more minimalist are Simon Tofield’s very funny Simon’s Cat animations, but they cannily capture the way real cats behave – with a slightly anthropomorphic twist. Imagine if the Whiskas Purple Cat had done stuff like this.

That’s another problem. LOLcat culture has taught us to respond well to cats doing funny things, and surely animation could have freed Whybin from the staid restrictions of having to work with real cats. The Purple Cat does cat-like things such as obscuring computer monitors, sitting on important documents, being adorable and winding itself around legs, but these are all things a real cat could do much more appealingly.

I get the feeling that this idea started off much edgier than it ended up here. The Purple Cat feels like it’s been patted by a boardroom full of suits. It’s cold, dull, and doesn’t inspire the kind of emotional response that pet food ads should. What a missed opportunity.