Meow Mix's Old Jingle Gets Modern Remixes, From Metal to Country

Feast your ears on the ferocious feline fret-work of the Meow Mix jingle reimagined as a heavy-metal anthem. It's part of a fun campaign from Publicis' PSOne that recasts the iconic "Meow meow meow meow" track in various musical styles.

Hey, do they know "Cat Scratch Fever"? Does anybody get that reference?

Sure, Meow Mix and metal music have blended before. This montage of old commercial footage paired with the Septicflesh death-rock track "Communion" provides a particularly nerve-shredding example. 

This time, however, the J.M. Smucker-owned brand itself cued the caterwauling, and the setlist continues below, with tabby takes on R&B, country and Latin music styles:

Chill beats, but those harmonic hairballs really need to work on their lyrics.

"The client handed us the gift of an iconic jingle, and they really had one ask: Make it famous again," PSOne executive creative director Jason Gorman tells Muse. "With the growth of streaming services and the prevalence of music in our day-to-day lives, the opportunity was right to strike with a more contemporary take, in genres that spoke to a wider range of people." 

Ron Travisano of the long-gone Della Femina Travisano & Partners agency developed the original TV campaign in the 1970s, which showed kitties meowing in sing-song fashion and prancing across the screen. The concept has been revisited in different forms several times since. There was even a mobile sound booth for neighborhood sing-alongs a few years back.

Fast-forward to the world of 2019, where "cat parents are an amazing group of people, and they're passionate when it comes to consuming cat-related content," Gorman says. "So we wanted to offer them something that they would genuinely find entertaining while also delivering on our history of knowing what cats love."

Cat parents, eh? Well, that's how owners tend to see themselves, so we'll go with it.

The spots will run on network and cable TV. They'll also appear at online venues like YouTube, Facebook, Instagram and, of course, Spotify, where the tracks have their own playlist. 

And yes, of course there are cat-themed album covers, with those shaggy metal-heads from "Endless Hiss" stealing the show paws-down (click images to enlarge):

Those mesmerizing metal cat-eyes are the stuff of nightmares. Kiss would approve: 

McCann launched a great heavy-metal-themed campaign recently featuring a fake band called Black Titanium. No cats there, but the lead singer's octave-spanning yowl was fabulously fierce! 

"The creation of the music tracks was where we, as the agency, really had to put our trust in our partners at Human," Gorman says, referring to the audio production house that handled the recording. "We provided specific genres and some direction as to the tone of the music, but they ran with it. Each briefing call was broken up with bouts of laughter at the absurdity of our endeavor. Hearing adults sing verses of 'Meow meow meow' over a speaker phone back and forth is a reminder of what you love about advertising."

"They gave us tons of demos in every genre," recalls associate creative director Shaun Bruce. "When a tune would get stuck in our head to the point where it made us question our mental health, we knew we had a hit on our hands."  

CREDITS

Client: The J.M. Smucker Company
Brand: Meow Mix
Campaign Title: Meow ReMix

Performers:

Latin:
• Solo (Lead) - James Zabaleta
• Solo - Ed Dunne

R&B:
• Lead - Ashley Rose
• Group - Ashley Rose, Anne Marie O'Neil, Susan Morris

Country:
• Solo Duet - Jon Hubbell
• Solo Duet - Devyn Rush

Metal:
• Solo - James Dean Wells
• Group - James Dean Wells, James Leibow, Morgan Visconti

Agency: PSOne
Agency Location: New York
Chief Creative Officer: Andy Bird
Executive Creative Director: Jason Gorman
Associate Creative Director, Art: Shaun Bruce
Associate Creative Director, Copy: Tim Wassler
EVP, Director of Integrated Production: Jenny Read
Executive Producer: Lauren Schneidmuller
Producer: Rachel Tierney
Music Producer: Rachel Rauch
Group Account Director: Gina Leone
Account Supervisor: Rebecca Harris

Production Company: Supply&Demand
Director: Joseph Kahn
Director of Photography: David Weldon, Jr.
Executive Producers: Nathan de la Rionda / Tim Case / Jeff Scruton
Producer: Ron Mohrhoff

Editorial Company: Cosmo Street
Editor: Chancler Haynes
Assistant Editor: Kyle Moriarty
Executive Producer: Maura Woodward
Senior Producer: Paolo Solarte

VFX: GloriaFX
Executive VFX Producer / VFX Supervisor: Sergii Mashevskyi
2D Department: Marina Fedorova
3D Supervisor: Viktor Bohdan
3D Artists: Evhenii Volodchenkov
Aleksei Yvanenko
Aleksandr Kolisnichenko
Dmitryi Kolot
Eduard Martynov
Andrei Nezolenko
Vytalyi Rohachynskyi
Aleksei Sliusar
Serhei Churykov
Nastia Sheremeteva

VFX Supervisor: Oleh Hrubyi

Compositing Artists: Edhar Beimo
Oleh Bohovenko
Olha Eremenok
Elina Kazymahomedova
Tatiana Kliuchyk
Karina Kuzmickaya
Arsen Lytvynenko
Arsenyi Parkhomenko
Aleksei Proskurov
Anna Rybakova
Alena Sydorova
Dmytryi Fedoseenkov

Color: Company 3
Colorist: Tom Poole
Color Producer: Alexandra Lubrano

Audio: Harbor Picture Company
Audio Mixer: Steve Perski
Producer: Cammie Mcgarry

Music: Human
Executive Producer: James Wells
Country/R&B Creative Lead: Justin Hori
Country ReMix Composer: Jonathan Hubbell
R&B and Latin ReMix Composer: Ed Dunne
Metal/Latin Creative Lead: Matthew O'Malley
Metal Remix Composers: James Leibow & James Dean Wells