A dry cat food and a slogan about asking for it by name.

Meow Mix was introduced in 1973 as a dry cat food made by Ralston Purina, the St. Louis animal-feed and pet-food company. English Wikipedia dates the launch to that year, citing an advertisement in the Albuquerque Journal of 21 October 1973 that introduced Meow Mix as the cat food cats ask for by name. The brand’s own history page says the original recipe, flavoured with tuna, liver and chicken, was tested in 1973 and approved for expansion across the United States.

The slogan in that early advertisement has stayed with the brand. Wikipedia records two versions, “Tastes so good, cats ask for it by name” and the line that the brand is the only one cats ask for by name, and the Meow Mix website still uses the second as a registered tagline. The idea is simple: the product name contains the sound a cat makes, so a cat that meows can be said to be asking for it.

The advertising that turned that idea into sound came a year later. Wikipedia, citing a 1979 New York magazine article on the jingle business, says “The Meow Mix Theme” was composed in 1974 by Tom McFaul of the jingle house Lucas/McFaul. The idea came from Ron Travisano of the agency Della Femina Travisano and Partners, which held the Ralston Purina account at the time. Wikipedia describes how Travisano and the editor Jay Gold looped film of cats, running it forwards and backwards so that the animals seemed to be singing, and how McFaul then wrote music to fit the footage. The meows themselves were sung by the professional jingle singer Linda November. The brand’s history page tells the same story in its own words.

The words of the song are only one word, repeated: “meow.” Travisano’s further idea, according to Wikipedia, was to add English “translation” subtitles on screen, with a bouncing ball moving over them as in a sing-along. The subtitles changed from commercial to commercial and were often used to name the particular flavour being advertised, so that the same tune could sell each new variety.

Ralston Purina, a 2001 sale, Del Monte, then Smucker.

The jingle carried the brand for decades. The Meow Mix history page lists a commercial called “Claws Encounters” in 1984, made to mark ten years of the song, and in 1998 a campaign called “Frank & Baxter,” in which a talking tabby named Baxter kept telephoning his owner, Frank, to ask for Meow Mix.

Ownership changed at the turn of the century. When Nestlé agreed to buy Ralston Purina, the United States Federal Trade Commission cleared the deal in December 2001 after Ralston’s Meow Mix and Alley Cat brands were sold to the investment firm J.W. Childs, Wikipedia says, citing The Washington Post; the sale created a separate Meow Mix Company. Wikipedia, citing The New York Times, says the New York private-equity firm Cypress Group bought the company in 2003, and that Del Monte Foods acquired it in May 2006.

The independent years were busy ones for the brand’s marketing. The company history page lists a touring “Cat Cruiser,” a converted PT Cruiser, in 2003; “Meow TV,” a half-hour programme on the Oxygen network hosted by Annabelle Gurwitch, from May 2003; and a pop-up Meow Mix Café in New York City in 2004. In 2006 the brand added treats and appeared in “Meow Mix House” on Animal Planet, and in 2007 it launched the “Think Like a Cat” game show, hosted by Chuck Woolery.

Del Monte’s pet business was later renamed. Wikipedia says that in 2014 it became Big Heart Pet Brands, whose brands included Meow Mix, Kibbles ’n Bits, Milk-Bone and 9Lives. On 23 March 2015, Wikipedia says, citing a company release, The J.M. Smucker Company completed its acquisition of Big Heart Pet Brands, and Smucker has owned Meow Mix since then. The brand’s website still carries the Big Heart Pet name in its copyright line.

In April 2023 Smucker sold several pet-food brands, among them Kibbles ’n Bits, 9Lives, Nature’s Recipe, Gravy Train and Rachael Ray Nutrish, to Post Holdings. A Smucker release dated 28 April 2023 said the company would keep focusing on its dog-snack and cat-food brands, naming Milk-Bone and Meow Mix, so Meow Mix stayed with Smucker’s parent company.

Design and documentation.

The eight brands in this group are all dog and cat food or treat names. Pet-food brands sit at many different points in the trade, from companies that still carry a founder’s name to labels that now belong to much larger food or confectionery groups, and a single brand may be sold under more than one name in different countries.

A pet-food brand’s identity is carried mostly by its bag, can or pouch: the name set large, a photograph or drawing of an animal, a few strong colours that make a range easy to sort on a shelf, and sometimes a mascot or a jingle remembered from television. Because the company behind the name may have changed hands several times, the questions behind each name are worth asking plainly: who started it, who owns it now, and how its packs and advertising have changed.

Each guide separates what independent sources record from what the company says about itself — its origins, its owners over time and its advertising — and marks plainly what rests only on the company’s own word.

A jingle with subtitles.

Meow Mix is a brand whose identity is a sound before it is a picture. The name itself contains the sound a cat makes, the slogan turns that sound into a request, and the 1974 jingle sets the word to music and repeats it. Each part points back to the others: the product is called Meow Mix, cats say “meow,” and so cats are said to ask for it by name.

The television device made the sound visible. Ron Travisano’s looped film of cats appearing to sing gave the jingle a picture, and the subtitles with a bouncing ball, which Wikipedia describes changing from one commercial to the next, gave the meows a translation that could name a flavour. A viewer could follow the words on screen while hearing nothing but meows, so the same tune could advertise a whole range without new lyrics.

The brand has treated the jingle as an asset to be reworked rather than retired. Its history page lists a 2014 Jingle Contest, for which the brand released an electronic dance remix of the song and invited owners to record their own versions, remixes in R&B, country, heavy metal, Latin and electronic styles in 2019, and a “Meow Mix ReMix LP” released in 2021 to coincide with the Grammys. The same page includes a section headed “A Logo’s ‘Tail’,” showing earlier versions of the brand’s logo.

The brand’s campaigns listed on its history page also include characters and live events: a talking tabby on the telephone in 1998, a touring car and a television programme in 2003, a café in 2004, a reality series in 2006 and a game show in 2007, each built around cats and their owners.

For a design guide, Meow Mix shows how a brand can make a sound its main identity and keep it for half a century by changing the arrangement rather than the tune. Compare it with Kibbles ’n Bits, which shared owners with Meow Mix under Del Monte and Smucker until 2023, and Friskies, the Nestlé Purina cat food. For this guide we use jingle purple and tabby orange on cream with a rounded sans, an unofficial interpretation; no product or logo is reproduced.

Keep Meow Mix’s identity on hand — save it to a board in the Made Good inspiration library.