Ralston Purina Meow Off

In its search for the cat with the Magical Musical Meow, Ralston Purina ran an on-pack contest on bags of Meow Mix Brand Cat Food. The contest encouraged cat owners to enter their favorite feline in the ‘Search for the Magical Musical Meow.’

Six randomly selected cats (and their owners) would be flown to New York City where they would ‘sing’ in front of a full orchestra in the hopes of being crowned the cat with the Magical Musical Meow. The zany event was music to Michele Litzky’s ears.

With original music from famed composer, the late Joe Raposo, “The Meow that Saved the Kingdom – a Cautionary Cat’s Tale” premiered on the stage at Alice Tully Hall on the eve of Halloween. The six feline virtuosos would meow as part of the performance, which was narrated by Jane Alexander; celebrity judges Bess Myerson, the late Robert Merrill and Judy Collins were on hand to choose the cat with the most melodious meow.

The campaign began months before the cats took the stage.
Of course, getting the cats to meow on cue was not going to be an easy task. So we sent a photographer and sound crew to the home of each cat to ‘pre-record’ their meows and to take some family photos to be used in our media outreach.
And, in keeping with the grass-roots nature of the campaign, local media in each of the six cities (ranging from large markets like Boston and Little Rock to small, rural towns like Zimmerman, Minnesota) were invited to take part in the fun and feature the whiskered hometown heroes in newspaper and TV coverage.

While the cats were being groomed for their debut, we went to work organizing the event – handling everything from hotel reservations (they stayed at the Plaza) and arranging limousines for the cats’ arrival at Lincoln Center to writing the copy for the Lincoln Center/stagebill and arranging a ‘Meow Aid’ donation to shelters around the country based on their proximity to the finalists’ hometowns.

The key to the Meow Off’s success was national media coverage – something that had eluded event organizer’s in the past. With so critical a task at hand, we went to work doing one of the things that we do best – media outreach.

We left no stone unturned. We invited Garfield to be an honorary judge (he declined, but cartoonist Jim Davis sent his regrets in a special Meow Off cartoon). We suggested that William Safire take a look at the word ‘cat’ for his New York Times ‘On Language’ Column.

Today Show national correspondent Mike Leonard and then news reader John Palmer were both clawing to do a piece (Palmer won). The Meow Off was featured as an ‘orphan’ story in the Wall Street Journal. Every local news desk sent a crew and stories were fed to stations around the country.

And when the dander settled, it was a perky Persian from Boston named Pumpkin (how fitting) who was deemed the cat with the Magical Musical Meow. Lincoln Center would never be the same.