MONDAY Report : Cats Go Hollywood as Ad, Film Directors Look for Sleek Image
The commercial’s aim was to sell an automobile. So why did a gray-striped tabby cat have such a prominent role in the script?
“Cats are sleek and clean and sophisticated. There is an elegance about cats,” said Earl Cavanah, executive vice president and associate creative director at Scali McCabe Sloves, the New York advertising agency that created the successful television spot for Volvo.
Spurred by the growing popularity of cats, marketers are increasingly using the creatures to help sell a variety of products. In recent months, cats have appeared in ads selling automobiles, soft drinks, sleeping pills, telephones, and banking and insurance services. Canon USA named a typewriter-word processor “the Canon Cat” and built an entire campaign around a feline named Drake.
Additionally, cats appear to be catching up with dogs in getting work in movies and television shows. Television and movie makers are increasingly more likely to ask for a cat than a dog when shooting a character with a pet, said Cristie Miele, a trainer of domestic cats at Animal Actors of Hollywood.
In advertising, it’s not the simple popularity of cats, Cavanah said, explaining that in the case of the Volvo commercial, the feline image seemed just right for what is considered an upscale, sophisticated consumer product. Technically, the creators used the cat as a transition device in showing a family whose financial circumstances had improved over the years but had stuck with the Volvo automobile. The camera follows the cat across a living room from a piano with an old black-and-white photo of the family with an old Volvo to a window where it shows the family arriving in a brand-new Volvo. “We needed something live to make the transition. It would have been a little sterile without it,” Cavanah said.
Cavanah, the owner of a bull terrier, said a dog could have been used for the same purpose, but he added: “It wouldn’t have had the same effect. A cat was just right.”
One limitation on using cats in commercials is that they are notorious for not doing what humans want them to do, which increases the production time and costs. “Good cat talent is hard to find,” Cavanah said, explaining that his group got lucky with a cat flown to New York from Hollywood. The cat had to leap from the top of the piano and walk across the keyboard, setting off a sound track of Chopin. “This cat was terrific. The trainer got him to do it for 10 takes,” he said.
