CATS FOUND TO BE IN FAVOUR

Press, Volume CXV, Issue 33790, 12 March 1975, Page 25

CATS FOUND TO BE IN FAVOUR

An independent consumer research organisation made a survey with 47 cats over three feeding times and found that 53 per cent of them favoured the new beef and fish cat food in question, said the advertising manager for Watties Industries, Ltd (Mr E. A. Carne).

Mr Carne was replying to a letter to the editor of “The I Press” from S.J.M. Gavin, who asked for an explanation on the television, advertisement testing Wat-! tie’s new beef and cat fish; food “when the only competition (if you watch the beginning of the advertisement closely at the start) is a row of gloriously empty [plates.” The correspondent said he objected to the advertise[ment because, it was blatantly dishonest, it cost money, it was very badly ■done “our cats sampled it and had the effrontery to reject it" and it appeared with “nauseating regularity.”

Mr Carne said that firms were not allowed to show [competitors’ products on a television advertisement.

The cost of the 1975 advertising programme for the new cat food, which would end in March would be 2/100 of 1 per cent a can, he said. “Four screenings of the commercial in February and again in March is hardly 'nauseating regularity,’ and the correspondent's tat must b“ one of the ’silent majoiity' if it rejected the cat food,” Mr Carne said.