Scratch Pet Food pens open letter telling cats: “You suck” in new ‘Dear Cats’ campaign
Aussie pet food brand Scratch has penned the open letter that cats have long needed to hear.
Brought to life in a hero film starring Melbourne comedian Ben Hunter, the two-minute piece begins as a formal corporate announcement from the brand addressing the many requests for cat food they’ve received over the years.
That is, before launching into a perfectly reasonable rant detailing the many reasons Scratch refuses to feed felinekind – from disappearing for hours without explanation (rude) and bringing home dead presents (gross) to the criminal lack of seeing-eye cats or bomb-sniffing cats.
The actual message is simple: Scratch makes really healthy food for dogs. And only dogs. Cats, unfortunately, will have to look elsewhere.
Why are Scratch beefing with cats? They’re not. Not really. The campaign was born from a broader creative ambition inside Scratch: to resist the increasingly homogenous way dog food brands compete for attention and create some advertising people might actually want to watch.
Says Mike Halligan, Co-Founder, Scratch: “Dog food can be a pretty serious category, but that’s all the more reason to have fun with it. Dear Cats came from taking our core philosophy and flipping it. Scratch loves dogs. Sure. Fine. But Scratch definitely doesn’t love cats? Now we’ve got somewhere interesting to go.”
Says Isabelle Mason, Creative Director, Scratch: “There’s so much advertising competing for a few seconds of people’s attention that being perfectly sensible can actually be pretty risky. Not to mention kinda boring.”
Says Mike Halligan, Co-Founder, Scratch: “The real creative challenge was finding exactly how far we could go without getting cancelled by cat parents. The answer for us was to take an absurdly strong stance in a completely unnecessary fight.”
Says Isabelle Mason, Creative Director, Scratch: “Ben was the perfect talent for this because he understood the tone immediately. The more seriously we treated it, the funnier it became. He brought a heap to the writing and his improv had the whole crew in stitches.”
The campaign was developed in-house by Scratch and produced with SHOTPRO.
Says Isabelle Mason, Creative Director, Scratch, who also directed the TVC: “Keeping the work in-house is a huge strength for us. It means we stay close to every part of it, from the first scribble through to the final cut, without losing what made the idea good along the way. Between us, we’ve worked at big agencies and brand-side, across advertising, theatre, comedy and film — with an AWARD School winner in the mix. Then we bring in great specialist partners like Shot Pro to elevate it even further.”
The campaign launched across digital, SVOD, OOH and social media in August.
Dear Cats continues across shorter films and social content, including one particularly brutal rejection of an admittedly pretty cute cat. The cat in question happens to belong to Scratch’s in-house vet, Dr Sam. Scratch maintains it had no idea she was a cat person when it hired her.
Cats were given the opportunity to comment. They declined to respond. Presumably because they weren’t listening in the first place. Assholes.
In-house team: Scratch Pet Food
Co-Founder / ECD: Mike Halligan
Head of Creative: Isabelle Mason
Senior Copywriter: Holly Burgess
Content Creator: Charlotte Ritter
Video Editor: Yanni Zhou
Production Company: SHOTPRO
D.O.P: David Truasheim
Gaffer: Reuben Van Weeran
Camera Operator: Kaidin Jackson
Sound Recordist: Chad Aizicowitz
Cast:
Comedian/writer: Ben Hunter
Cat: Viney
Dog: Blink
Register for FREE HERE and receive the Campaign Brief Daily Bulletin and/or the global Best Ads Best of the Week Bulletin. Subscribe to Campaign Brief Magazine.
#More Creative News #No paywalls #No annual membership fees
Subscribe to Portfolio & Reel for current listings of Australian and NZ ad agency and production company leadership and key personnel.