Whiskas
Encyclopedia
Brand
The American Marketing Association defines a brand as a "Name, term, design, symbol, or any other feature that identifies one seller's good or service as distinct from those of other sellers."...
of cat food
Cat food
Cat food is food intended for consumption by cats.As with all species, cats have requirements for specific dietary nutrients, rather than ingredients. Certain nutrients, including many vitamins and amino acids, are degraded by the temperatures, pressures and chemical treatments used during...
sold throughout the world. It is owned by the American group Mars, Incorporated
Mars, Incorporated
Mars, Incorporated is a worldwide manufacturer of confectionery, pet food, and other food products with US$30 billion in annual sales in 2010, and is ranked as the 5th largest privately held company in the United States by Forbes. Headquartered in McLean, unincorporated Fairfax County, Virginia,...
. It is available either as meat-like pieces in cans, pouches, or dry biscuits. Most packaging is a recognisable purple colour.
History
Whiskas was originally known as Kal Kan when it started in 1936. In 1988, the company changed its name to Whiskas in order to promote its cat food internationally.Whiskas is made in McLean, Virginia
McLean, Virginia
McLean is an unincorporated community and census-designated place in Fairfax County in Northern Virginia. The community had a total population of 48,115 as of the 2010 census....
in the USA by the company formerly known as Pedigree Pet Foods.
Marketing
The well-known advertising slogan for Whiskas was "eight out of ten owners said their cat prefers it". After a complaint to the Advertising Standards Authority, this had to be changed to "eight out of ten owners who expressed a preference said their cat prefers it". The British panel show 8 out of 10 Cats8 Out of 10 Cats
8 out of 10 Cats is a television comedy panel game made by Zeppotron for Channel 4. It was first broadcast on 3 June 2005. The show is based on statistics and opinion polls, and draws on polls produced by a variety of organizations and new polls commissioned for the programme, carried out by...
took its name from the slogan. The slogan has been much imitated - in the 1980s Red Stripe Lager was advertised with the slogan "9 out of 10 cats prefer it", a play on "cat" meaning a trendy person.
In 1998, Australian rules footballer Garry Hocking changed his name by deed poll to "Whiskas" as part of the Geelong Football Club promotion with the company. It was the first such publicity stunt of its kind.
On Wednesday, 27 January 1999, Whiskas singles aired the very first "commercial for cats" on American TV. The VHS release featured a small segment on how the advert worked, and showed several cats' reactions. The advert itself was a collection of clips with contrasting colours, fish and video captured from underwater. The end of the video (before fading out and then running again) claimed that "In our tests, 8 out of 10 preferred it", a previously mentioned slogan for the company.
In Hungary
Hungary
Hungary , officially the Republic of Hungary , is a landlocked country in Central Europe. It is situated in the Carpathian Basin and is bordered by Slovakia to the north, Ukraine and Romania to the east, Serbia and Croatia to the south, Slovenia to the southwest and Austria to the west. The...
the Whiskas advertising slogan is "A macskák Whiskast vennének" which means "Cats would buy Whiskas (if they could)". Slogans with the same meaning are used in Serbia, Germany, Finland, France, Slovakia, Russia, Romania, Poland and Slovenia.
In Back to the Future
Back to the Future
Back to the Future is a 1985 American science-fiction adventure film. It was directed by Robert Zemeckis, written by Zemeckis and Bob Gale, produced by Steven Spielberg, and starred Michael J. Fox, Christopher Lloyd, Lea Thompson, Crispin Glover and Thomas F. Wilson. The film tells the story of...
, a machine is seen opening a can of Kal Kan and dumping it into Einstein's (Doc's
Emmett Brown
Doctor Emmett Lathrop "Doc" Brown, Ph.D. is a fictional character and one of the lead characters in the Back to the Future film trilogy, in which he is the inventor of the first time machine, which he builds out of a DeLorean sports car...
dog) bowl.