01.18.07
Posted in Cat Articles, Just For Fun, Cat Sites - Our Picks, Marketing & Opinions at 8:45 pm by pawpathblog
I’m taking a brief rest after my online work! Whew, I do love the warmth of the laptop keys. Purrrrrr. Anyway, our friend Sharolyn over at the fabulous new blog Artsy Catsy posted this comment about the review we received back in August of 2006 (mentioned in our post which you can read here). Thanks for the support! We loved the comment so much that we wanted to make it a post and Sharolyn kindly gave us permission. We cat bloggers have to stick together!
- Bambi
| Kudos, Juli, for your informative, well-researched post! I’ve recently launched our ArtsyCatsy “character blog” through the voices of our fifteen (yes, 15!) cats as an adjunct to our upcoming business website, an e-commerce site offering a wide variety of cat-themed original artist creations.
I think that over time, many of the critics will reverse their opinions about blogs written by our cats, particulary when those blogs, like yours and mine, are intended to put a personal face on our businesses. Why? Because blogs by cats are read by cat lovers, businesses like ours cater to cat lovers … and all you have to do is LISTEN to a cat lover! We speak CAT; we talk to our cats in a language a non-cat-lover would never understand. We communicate with our cats as if they are our children (they are!) and they talk right back to us!
I defy anyone to find a non-cat-lover who would ever utter something like, “Ooh, my wootsie pootsie Callie-walley bootsie toots,” or come home from work and snuggle up in bed with their pet lizard to tell it about their rotten day.
Therefore, our cat “character blogs” are speaking in our readers’ and customers’ language, one they not only only understand, but speak and respond to every day of their lives.
Sure, we can pepper our posts with a human voice every now and then, but cat lovers communicate with their kitties constantly, and it’s obvious by the number of popular cat blogs out there that they enjoy communicating with others’ cats online.
I don’t think cat-oriented sites fit into the mold, so I can’t agree with the criticism you’ve received that a cat character blog could lose sales that you might have received with a strictly informative blog. Have you ever walked into a retail store that has cats running around as mascots? If you’re a cat lover, the first thing you do is talk with the cats, and the second thing you do is become a loyal customer of that business!
Some think cat lovers are a bit weird; some may think we’re downright twisted; but one thing is certain - we “click” and we bond … with our cats, with others’ cats, with stray cats, and with each other. And just as a business in America is wise to speak to its customers in English, not Farsi or Greek, I think a business catering to cat lovers is wise to blog to its customers in their own native language!
And my cat, Rocky, says, “Right on, Meowmie!!” |
Permalink
08.17.06
Posted in Marketing & Opinions at 2:24 am by pawpathblog
In June, the world’s first cat reality show, “The Meow Mix House,” premiered on the Animal Planet. It is a commercial in disguise for the cat food giant Meow Mix Company, where 10 cats bunk together in a posh, tricked out cat apartment in New York City, and cats get voted off. The winner gets a kush “position” at Meow Mix, and the outcasts get adopted. Read more about the premise of this show in my previous post about the premiere of Meow Mix House. Their much nobler goal, they insist, is promoting cat adoption alongside ASPCA.
The final & 10th, episode will air on Animal Planet on Friday, August 18th, during the 9:00pm hour (it’s a 3-minute segment so it will air at approximately 9:10PM EST).
These cat-estants have a blog, too! The site shows which cats have already been adopted, and there are 3 cats yet to be adopted: Bambi, Cisco, and Zen. Read about adopting Bambi on ASPCA.com
Myrna Blith on National Review Online reported on June 15, 2006 that Meow Mix seemed to be getting good publicity before the show aired, and one cat favorite, Ellis (who has since been voted off) already had 20,000 votes before the show even began. She admits she doesn’t like cats, and wonders whether this show is just “painfully dumb or just some silly summertime fun?” Read more on her review entitled “Cats Gone Wild.”
So is this idea dumb? Painfully dumb even? Maybe so, but it’s been generating a whole lot of publicity. The official website for Meow Mix House boasts over 250,000 votes for the show… not too shabby! (Voting has been closed). Grand Central Marketing cooked up this idea with Meow Mix, and it seems to have been a success, garnering over 150 million media impressions, and covered by the New York Times, The Today Show, E!, and much more.
My opinion? I watched the first segment when it premiered and I felt that the host was irritating, and I wasn’t crazy about the assigned personalities to the cats, so it wasn’t quite my bag of chips. But I’m biased as I am not a huge fan of “reality” tv shows in the first place (I put “reality” in quotes because all of those shows are fabricated, just like the cats’ personalities) However, I thought the concept was really cute, as an elaborate commercial. The cat pad was adorable, and if Leo and Bambi, my cats, had any interest in tv (which they don’t), they would have been meowing for some of the goodies in that apartment.
And let’s face it: us cat lovers always want to see more cute cats! It’s just always entertaining and fun. So will Meow Mix House produce another season? Who knows. But was it a success? I’m not a marketing expert, nor do I have access to Meow Mix Company’s statistics, but it does seem like from a publicity point of view, it was a success. Meow Mix does a good job of conveying to consumers that they care about cats - and hey, sure, maybe they do. There’s got to have been a reason why Mike Myers used the Meow Mix jingle in the first Austin Powers film to entice Mr. Bigglesworth. The company is great at advertising!
But with actually buying cat food? Leo & Bambi have the final say in our house, and they are not swayed by advertising, no matter how groundbreaking or weird. Leo had a Meow Mix phase, but both of them are Fancy Feast cats. What can I say? They’re pretty fancy.
Permalink
08.14.06
Posted in Marketing & Opinions at 3:30 pm by pawpathblog
We’re delighted to have been featured on the blog Pajama Market as “Small Business Blog of the Day” at http://www.pajamamarket.com
Here’s the link to the review:
To remind some of you, our blog has stemmed from our online store, www.pawpathlittermat.com. Although this blog was created to post updates on our store and bring traffic into our store, an equally important factor is to showcase our beloved cats, Leo & Bambi, and connect with other cat lovers and cat bloggers, whether or not they become customers.
The blogger of Pajama Market, Brian Brown, is absolutely charming in our correspondence, and his review was very well written and thorough, and 100% appreciated. The review has constructive criticism about character blogs (blogs written by ficticious or non-human characters), and recommends that we should stop letting our cats using the computer…so, for the sake of argument, I’ve asked Bambi and Leo to, er, hold their tongues on this post. This got me thinking about arguments for and against character bloggers. And this topic is not so cut and dry, folks.
Here’s an exploration about character blogs (as a marketing tool, and not a purely personal site) and I’ve sited some references on both sides. Read the rest of this entry »
Permalink
