IAMS Cat Food

14 March 2007 by Simon

This is on the blog because it’s filthy.

It’s just plain wrong that a cat food ad should stick in my head at all, I don’t own a cat and my next door neighbour takes pleasure in killing and eating them whenever she gets the urge so the chances of me owning one that lives more than a week are slim. But there’s something about this advert that’s dirty.

To be more precise, there’s something about the last line. You probably know it already, if your mind works like mine. It’s probably been stuck in there since you first heard it, you know it shouldn’t be there but stuck it is, in all it’s wrongness.

It’s spoken by a woman who sounds like she could be the younger, flirtier slightly more desperate sister of the M&S voice-over woman.

“I can’t wake up without my furry alarm clock…”

Furry Alarm Clock.

Whereas the M&S woman is trying, and, to be fair, succeeding in getting the food to sound tempting and delicious, her sister’s stuck with a cat food ad and throws in this line at the end to screw with your mind.

CATS. FOOD. A HUSKY VOICED WOMAN IN BED TALKING ABOUT HER FURRY….

… ALARM CLOCK.

It doesn’t even make sense but the insinuation is right there. She really wants to be doing a sultry and seductive food advert like her sister, but she’s stuck with flogging this so she’s going to awkwardly flirt and mess with your brain out of spite and get you to giggle like a schoolboy at something that doesn’t even make sense but sounds smutty just because of the way she says it.

And women like that scare me.

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Just How Bad is this Ad?

(13 votes, average: 4.23 out of 5)

11Responses:

Busby

Said on the 11 July 2007

Correct me if I’m wrong, but isn’t the advertisement you are talking about the one for adopting a cat?
Silky

Said on the 11 July 2007

Hey Busby.

No, no. It’s definitely for cat food. Although I’m sure many people would like to woken by a “furry alarm clock”.
Busby

Said on the 12 July 2007

Are you sure? Isn’t the advert like ‘our eyes met and I knew he was the one’ or soething, like where she is choosing him in a cattery?
Silky

Said on the 12 July 2007

Yeah, that’s the one Busby. The power of advertising has worked it’s magic again. The first bit is set in a cattery… but it is for cat food and not adopting a cat

Here’s a link to the ad:

http://www.tellyads.com/show_movie.php?filename=TA0177&advertiser=Iams
Soapy

Said on the 8 February 2008

I’m glad i discovered this one in the archives because i thought i was the only one who laughed every time i heard her say that but then i am the living embodiment of Finbarr Saunders anyway.
Cal

Said on the 2 October 2008

I’m ashamed to say I think I am the story behind this ad – with a bit less cheese. I worked for a prominent global marketing agency and we got a survey from the Iams team looking for fun pet stories. I had recently rehomed two cats and one was waking me up every day at about 6.30am, by jumping onto the bed and tapping me until I got up and fed him. This meant I never overslept any more. I regaled this story over email being suitably ga-ga about my new family members, but never heard back from the team. Very soon afterwards I saw the ad on TV. I don’t recall referring to my cat as a furry alarm clock in my email to the team, but there were too many coincidences with my story – the rehoming, the waking me up every morning – and the fact I’d fed it directly to the Iams agency team. So there we are. For the record – the cat stopped doing that after a few months, and I definitely did not get any free cat food!
Pauliwalli

Said on the 30 October 2008

“Im more than just a cat, Im an Iams Cat”…

how incredibly, achingly cheesy that phrase is.. and the voice of the pensioner knows no shame in making his bloody money… I have to block my ears of to this nonsense that makes me feel that some people are so obsessed with animals like cats which lick themselves and rarely wash, covered in saliva and bacterial infestations because they hate water.. how disgusting.. I will actively microwave the damned things unless they pull that cheese from the TV.. godammit!..
Jellyfish McSaveloy

Said on the 25 March 2009

“Im an Iams Cat”

No, you’re an annoying pensioner cunt who used to be an annoying acting cunt who was inexplicably famous despite a total lack of any kind of talent or ability. I’m sure you need the extra pennies what with the credit crunch and the miserable and almost insulting state pension, but for fucks sake, could you not have found an ad that was less demeaning and irritating? Cunt.
Hazel

Said on the 29 April 2009

wow, love this website. Just pissing myself laughing, great stuff keep it up!
Another Ad Hater

Said on the 12 September 2009

“I am more than just a dog, I am an IAMS dog”

Oh, just FUCK OFF! As if you’d need to feed a dog 37 fucking tins of dog food! Who the fuck buys that many tins in a day?!
And how the hell did they know it was 37? DId they just have some dog sitting there being fed several tins of dog food until it was the same as the IAMS product?
Suzanne Lawson

Said on the 27 September 2009

My cat can’t read. Just thought I would mention it, if people didn’t know.