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.

Just How Bad is this Ad?

9 Votes

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6Responses:

Busby

July 11th, 2007 5:36 pm

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

July 11th, 2007 8:36 pm

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

July 12th, 2007 7:11 pm

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

July 12th, 2007 9:21 pm

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

February 8th, 2008 12:39 pm

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

October 2nd, 2008 10:28 pm

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!