How Meow Mix future-proofed its jingle for another generation

When Meow Mix debuted its jingle in 1974, there were only four TV stations in the U.S.

The song played on those airwaves for 22 years before going on hiatus. It was then revived in 2012 when brand research showed that the Meow Mix jingle was the second-most memorable in the nation, behind only The Oscar Mayer Weiner Jingle.

In the last five years, the brand has sought to remix the jingle so it can both preserve its widely recognized brand asset and connect with a new generation of consumers. These efforts paid off. Meow Mix has not only breathed new life into an aging asset, but also found a way to make an old-fashioned TV tactic relevant to cord-cutting consumers, so its jingle can get stuck in the heads many more cat parents to come.

There’s value in tapping in to brand equity that has an intergenerational resonance, says Purna Virji, principal consultant of content solutions at social platform LinkedIn..

“The longer a unique brand element is used, the more ingrained it gets into public consciousness,” she says. “Think DeBeers’ ‘A diamond is forever.’ It’s been used since the 1940s. That embeds it in the minds of the public, building trust and loyalty, as well as category association.”

For older generations there’s a familiarity that goes along with the Meow Mix jingle. For newer generations, there’s the draw of nostalgia that savvy brands can use to illustrate their longevity. Of course, campaigns have often circled back to their most powerful campaigns, such as the return of Fruit of the Loom’s Fruit Guys and Geico’s Caveman, as well as the recreation of Life Cereal’s Little Mikey. But when it comes to jingles, a remix is a brand refresh.

With evolving media consumption habits and the emergence of new digital channels, Meow Mix found that its jingle wasn’t quite resonating with younger consumers anymore. So it partnered with creative agency BBH USA to come up with an innovative brand strategy fit for an omnichannel world.

“If you look online, cats and music still go together — and they go really well and it’s all over the internet,” says Alan Wilson, senior vice president and group creative director at BBH. “That’s when we realized what we wanted to do is not so much a rebrand. What we wanted to do was a remix.”

The jingle has since been reimagined as a pop single called “Wet Your Whiskers” from the boy (cat) band Tabby 5, plus in additional genres popular among young consumers, including electronic (“HouseKäat”), death metal (“Endless Hiss”), reggaeton (“Gatocito”), R&B, country and jazz. A new remix is coming in early 2025, but Wilson did not disclose the style.

The connected TV opportunity

In recent months, the brand aired the Tabby 5 remix on Hulu in an effort to reach the rapidly growing streaming audience, and to take advantage of the targeting and attribution tools available on connected TV (CTV) platforms.

Brad Jashinsky, a director analyst at research firm Gartner, explains that Amazon’s demand-side platform (DSP), for example, allows brands to target consumers who have indicated interest in a particular product category and who have purchased products in related categories.

Other DSPs offer similar retailer audience data to help brands target their audiences with streaming ads. With this data, brands can also see how many purchases of their products were made by the audience that viewed the ad.

“The tracking isn’t perfect and can’t track all in-store purchases unless they are linked up to an account, such as a loyalty program or subscription membership,” Jashinsky adds. “However, the attribution is much better than many other advertising channels, especially linear TV.”

What’s more, real-time reporting on engagement and conversion “makes it possible to adjust strategies quickly,” according to Linear CEO Luke Heinecke, “ensuring the brand remains relevant and the desired audience is effectively reached through creative content on platforms like Hulu.”

That, in turn, can yield cost-efficiencies for the brand in question. And with engaging content, CTV can help a brand like Meow Mix capture viewer attention and improve brand recall.

Instant recognition

One potential key to engaging consumers is to pay earnest tribute to the genres.

“We all made a conscious effort [that] every note, every drumbeat, even every meow should feel like it’s from that genre, rather than it being a parody of that genre — really leaning into it authentically and paying a real homage to it,” BBH’s Wilson says.

A brand asset like the Meow Mix jingle can find new life on digital channels partly because audio and video are so prevalent in the modern media landscape. Research shows that consumers spent more than 3.5 hours a day watching digital videos in 2023, and that figure is projected to increase to four hours in 2025.

Even newer brand audio cues can capitalize on opportunities on social and streaming platforms as the brand sound becomes more recognizable — think McDonald’s 2003 jingle “Ba Da Ba Ba Bah,” for instance.

Ad formats within these channels are also getting shorter, which enables brands with familiar sounds to quickly connect with their audiences.

“We continue to see more and more brands do seven- and 15-second ads. How do you get someone’s attention in that short time frame when, at best, they might be half-paying attention?” Jashinsky asks. “That recognizable jingle is a huge asset that I think a lot of brands are going to start bringing back.”

Indeed, makeup brand Maybelline has revived its “Maybe It’s Maybelline” tagline on TikTok. The slogan first appeared in 1991, according to a press release.

Meanwhile, pharmaceutical company Novo Nordisk is using a revised version of Scottish rock band Pilot’s 1974 song “Magic” to promote diabetes drug Ozempic. Instead of “Oh, oh, oh, it’s magic,” lead singer David Paton croons, “Oh, oh, oh, Ozempic.”

By using a preexisting song, this newer brand can also lean into and benefit from an earworm, Jashinsky says.

Mike Ladman, music supervisor at ad agency Droga5, agrees that an element of familiarity helps brands connect with listeners on streaming and social platforms, especially as attention spans and content formats grow shorter. Instagram is tricky, he notes, because it’s a sound-off app, but TikTok is perfect because ads play with sound.

Repetition and consistency

Brands should of course pay attention to audience relevancy when choosing media placements, but consumer brands like Meow Mix — which can be used by virtually anyone — have a lot of freedom.

LinkedIn’s Virji recommends that brands zero in on where they can get maximum exposure to their target audience, which includes not just where those consumers spend their time, but how they use these platforms.

“For brand assets, it’s about building recall and brand association, so they’ll want maximum exposure and repeated exposure to help build these memory structures,” she adds.

In fact, specific channels may not matter as much as repetition — particularly because jingles require this to get stuck in someone’s head.

“I think with all types of brand assets, it’s consistency, consistency, consistency,” Gartner’s Jashinsky says. “How can you involve a logo, a jingle, whatever it might be […] how do you tie that into almost every campaign that you’re running and then, also, how do you bring that into other experiences [like apps, organic, paid, social and PR] as well?”

The Meow Mix brand has a long-running well of recognition to draw from — and Wilson believes that with consistency the remixes, too, will have staying power.

“[The campaign is] definitely ongoing,” Wilson says. “It’s one of those ones, in my opinion, we could keep on going as long as there’s different genres around that can connect to those audiences that we want to connect to.”