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Smalls Celebrates All the Things Cats Are
Putting the playful, pompous, persnickety pets in proper perspective
“Irish exiting is cat.” “A dirty martini is cat.” “Solitude is cat.”
Smalls’ latest push purrs with such oddly worded pearls of wisdom as the cat food brand embraces all manner of feline behavior.
Dubbed “Is Cat,” the campaign rolls through Sept. 27 across TV, OOH, live events and creator media.
Developed in-house with an assist from Chico Studio, the work seeks to position Smalls as THE go-to for cat owners, a resource solely dedicated to tabbies and therefore uniquely positioned to serve their nutritional needs.
Here, Muse chats with brand marketing director Melody Park about the strategy.
What sparked the idea?
We kept clocking how much cats were suddenly everywhere—cats were having a cultural moment. So we started parsing the why. Why cats, why now? As a brand that’s always been in service of cats, we’ve dedicated several years to studying them and wanting to do better by them. So where we landed is that cats embody exactly the qualities the world seems hungry for right now. They refuse to perform. They know who they are. They know what they want. They take up space. They live in a beautiful duality and acceptance of self. So in an era that’s exhausted by performance and algorithmic slop, cats are actually quite the role model.
The wording’s memorably strange. Do people say “This is cat” and “That is cat”—is that a thing?
The campaign evolved into a celebration of the cat sensibility, and a chance to reverse a lot of the outdated and negative stereotypes attached to cats. Naming the things that “are cat” became our way of extending that identity out into the world, an entry point for anyone to start seeing things the same way cats do.
How does that approach serve the brand?
The first thing we want is recognition. Ideally you see a line and have a small moment of “wait, that’s me,” and suddenly you’re looking at your own behavior, different objects, the world around you, through this new lens. We’d love for it to enter the internet’s language: this is cat, that is cat. And for people to genuinely reframe how they think about cats.
Longer term, though, we want Smalls to become synonymous with modern cat parenthood. Not just a cat food brand, but the brand and the home for people who love cats like we do. The campaign is our way of introducing ourselves in that way, and showing how well we understand cats and cat people. Of course, part of the hope is that these folks eventually become customers, but that’s the downstream effect of doing the brand building and cultural work well. Otherwise, the campaign is primarily about staking our claim: Smalls is the cat brand.
Did you source footage from the internet?
Actually, no! The creative was entirely made in-house, in partnership with production studio Chico Studio and photographer Paul Yem. Everything you see on the OOH and TV was captured on a four-day shoot across Southern California. We had several cats on set: professional cats, but also ordinary house cats brought in by their parents. And while we naturally captured a lot of the cats, we made sure to shoot inanimate objects, landscapes and people-driven vignettes. Because cats are wide-ranging, and the campaign had to be too.
Uncooperative is cat. And all animals on set. Any challenges for the crew?
We were very copy-driven in our approach. Every shoot day had thorough shot lists tied to specific lines: what “tomfoolery” looks like, what “don’t mind if I do” looks like, what “solitude” looks like. That said, part of working with cats is staying open to what happens on set. You can plan every frame, but the best moments come from a cat doing exactly what a cat does.. which is whatever it wants. There’s always some magic there.
Related: For Peugeot, Giant Cats Prowl an Awesome Model Town
