#crusha cats | Explore Tumblr Posts and Blogs

squideo · 1 year

Text

How Crusha Crushed It with The Crusha Kittens Advert

In this series, Squideo has examined the best ways to turn advertising content into gold. Now that we’ve broken down the eight key ingredients, it’s time to dive deep into some examples of stellar advertising. This week, the advert in question was picked by Squideo’s Production Manager Callum Major.

When asked why this particular advert had become his favourite of all time, Callum said: “I remember the advert from when I was younger, when I’d see it on TV all the time. It’s so whacky and bizarre! It's so bad it's good!”

The Artistocrusha

Crusha is a brand of milkshake mix, which recently started selling desserts as part of its range. It may be a surprise that Crusha dates back to 1955, when it was managed by British Sugar. The branding that you may associate with Crusha didn’t come about, however, until late 2001 when it came under the control of a British Sugar subsidiary: Silver Spoon. British Sugar, which has been owned by Associated British Foods since 1991, effectively owns all the sugar produced in the United Kingdom.

Over the next two years, Silver Spoon worked to redevelop the Crusha brand in order to appeal to a new audience. This included a new logo and the adoption of cats as the brand mascot, despite most adult cats being lactose intolerant.

Crusha in Boots

In 2003, the first advert for the revitalised Crusha was released. The mastermind behind this eye-catching advert was Joel Veitch of RealGood, a web animator and singer-song writer, who has been responsible for several high-profile pieces of work including the 2012 animated television special Uncle Wormsley’s Christmas.

The advert is a story of mixed success. Later in 2003, the same year the advert was released, Crusha became involved in a scandal when it’s owners discovered that a batch of faulty Crusha milkshakes had gone out to retailers. Instead of notifying the retailer, Tesco, British Sugar decided to send workers into the store and buy as many of the 580 affected bottles as they could. Tesco realised what was happening and removed the stock, creating a negative press story that undid some of the advert’s impact.

To add insult to injury, the advert was eventually banned from British television by Ofcom in 2004 after several people attempted to recreate the advert with real cats. One man was ultimately arrested for the mistreatment of animals. That didn’t stop Crusha putting out an additional advert by Veitch in 2008, this time with the cats in a gym. Eventually the brand moved away from the visual style of Veitch’s work, but the cat has remained a feature in all their adverts; fully animated since 2014.

Veitch’s animations were so popular in the 2000s, that after Coca Cola recreated aspects of his work – for a 2007 advert that ran in Argentina – he launched a lawsuit against the company. They eventually reached a settlement. Coca Cola had used his band’s song Ninja in a video full of kittens. Not exactly a subtle rip-off.

The Crusha King

Compared to the technical complexities that went into creating Cadbury’s Gorilla advert, which we explored earlier in this series, the process for making the Crusha Kittens advert was relatively straightforward. After all, no one had to travel across the world to find the right gorilla costume. Crusha Kittens wasn’t a major production, so why does it have such a lasting legacy? The advert regularly makes the lists of iconic British adverts and the song lives in the memories of many early noughties children.

Mental Music

The last two adverts broken down in the Advert Alchemy series, Gorilla and The Little Duckling, used existing music in their videos. Crusha Kittens, however, features an original song. It’s a short song, only four lines total, yet it has the overwhelming power of an earworm – guaranteed to make you sing “I want some Crusha” for days on end.

Since the video opens with several cats holding instruments, including an accordion, music was essential to the plot. Since the advert is aimed at children – who will convince their parents to buy the product – the song also had to be simple enough for them to memorise and Veitch definitely delivered when he composed this doozy.

Cute Cat

Even if you’re too young to remember the early days of the internet, scrolling through any social media platform in this day and age will prove this to be true: kittens are always cute. The Crusha Kittens advert predates the cat memes that society has grown to love in the 2020s, but even in 2003 it was well known that children like animals, and cats are a type of animal.

While none of the animals in the video are emphasised for cuteness (in fact some people state the cows gave them nightmares), by adding anthropomorphic features like holding instruments and wearing hats, and singing in an unexpectedly deep voice, the creators of this advert definitely understood the audience they were targeting: kids.

Ancient Animation

In a world of apps that deliver top-quality and relatively inexpensive video production tools, the Crusha Kittens advert may seem terribly outdated. Like something that was mocked up on Photoshop and Microsoft Paint. But to audiences in 2003, that was the beauty of the advert.

Crusha Kittens ran during the 4pm to 6pm timeslot, most popular with advertisers targeting a child audience. In 2003, Crusha Kittens was typically airing between Capri Sun and Nickelodeon adverts. Their competitors were producing live-action or 2D animated videos. Crusha Kittens stood out because it didn’t use this format, and it made something that could be recreated by people at home.

Content Worth Gold

What do you think? What made Crusha Kittens so successful? Watch the full advert below and let us know in the comments.

youtube

Get in touch with the Squideo team today to find out how we can improve your advertising strategy with video production, motion graphics, social media management and much more!

4 notes · View notes

rainsparadiso · 8 days

Text

Here in England, about two decades ago, we had the ‘Crusha milkshakes’ advert and no joke it was the best thing going.

#crusha #milkshakes #funny ads #commercial #cats of tumblr #what it means to be British #funny cats

0 notes

ajoytobeheld · 7 months

Text

I WISH THIS WAS A LIVEJOURNAL ACCOUNT

March 20th, 2008

this is my favourite time of the day when we’re not on tour.

3pm: come dine with me (best thing on tv)

3:30pm: countdown

4:15pm: deal or no deal (often coupled with a nap)

5pm: golden balls

6pm: friends

6:30pm: hollyoaks

usually sat with one or both of my sisters, and my mum.

one of the things I think about often as ‘gareth off of los campesinos!’ is how truthful i should be with my opinions. i mean, if 18 months ago somebody had come up to me on the street and said “what do you think of <insert name of band I don’t like here>?” then I would happily, gloriously have rattled off a list of reasons why they are awful and why anybody who likes them is very foolish.

but since being in a band that for some reason music press and some humans are vaguely interested in I find myself facing questions like this quite a lot. I think the best thing to do would be to refuse to comment, or reply with something like “can’t i just speak about bands i like instead?”, which i did do for a long time, but that got boring. It’s not through a desire to be controversial at all, but just to be HONEST. i’m a ‘music fan’. and music fans talk about bands that they like and bands that they don’t like, right? it’s natural.

so now I’ve been asked to do a question thing for a broadsheet newspaper, and it sets me up with questions like these:

“I couldn’t marry someone who liked…“

“The worst song I have heard is…“

what’s a boy to do?

I just saw an advert for crusha milk shake syrup stuff. It’s animated by the people that do rathergood.com. i remember spending a lot of time on that site when i was about 17. but basically, this time round in a post-’LOL cats’ world, I can see this being a pretty succesful ad-campaign (oh yeh, it has comedy cats in it, that’s my point).

i should write something about band stuff shouldn’t i? I’m mostly doing this because there have been no blog posts for a long time, and it’d be nice to keep it alive. But I’m not much up for writing about stuff that happens on tour, because i’ve already told my parents, and if i did it would probably look like this:

“HUMMUS IN FRANCE HAS DAIRY IN IT!! WHY WOULD THEY DO THAT!?!?!”

we just got back from SXSW though. it was a really great experience and put british festivals to shame (we said this about lollapalooza last year. i guess there’s just a lot more money and a lot less rain involved in those things). i got to see so many bands I was desperate to. Mika Miko, High Places, Times New Viking, John Maus, etc. the weather was glorious. i took my shirt off for a bit and wore shirts and sunglasses because there was no other way.

Listen to more: High Places, Mika Miko, Psychedelic Horseshit, cLOUDDEAD.

every time the bank asks me my ‘occupation’ i die inside a little.

what are your best dating tips? mine would be:

“always go out with someone who likes you a little bit more than you like them”.

and one day i will DO IT!

i’m gonna start work on issue two of ROMANCE IS BORING very shortly. some really exciting people have already said they will contribute. it’ll be ready for the april shows. probably.

garethx

#2008 #lc!blog

0 notes

incorrect-incorrect-jump · 8 months

Note

wrt the prompt list 4 is so airi

;; so real anon

Prompt List 4: "be honest are you crying about the commercial with the kitten in it?"

The commercial referenced is based off of one of those old Crusha milk ones!! >:)

Airi, while learning more about her fellow group members, had been roped into watching old commercials by Minori. Allegedly they were incredibly unhinged and comedic. Airi hadn't thought so, but she continued to watch the compilation videos that Minori had sent her.

Then she got an ad for flavoured milk. Those cats looked adorable. And they were playing little instruments!

Did they just get crushed?

Airi hadn’t noticed the fact she started tearing up at a milk commercial.

Haruka looked up at Airi from behind her book and stared at the sobbing mess that she had become. She sighed and walked over, placing her book on the bench.

"Airi, are you okay?" Haruka begun, "I understand if you don't want to tell me, but a sudden fit of sadness could–"

"THE POOR CATS HARUKA!" Airi got out between her cries. Haruka was speechless. She held her mouth open to speak but nothing came out of it for a few seconds,

"Airi.. Be honest, are you crying about the commercial with the kitten in it?"

"YES? WAIT- No! NO! I AM NOT! MY ALLERGIES ACTED UP!"

"At a commercial?"

"Yes." Airi was stubborn for sure. Haruka on the other hand was considering just leaving her to sob it out.

"Sorry we're late–?" The roof door burst open with a shout from Minori and Shizuku following her from behind. The two stared at Airi and Haruka for a moment.

"She was crying at a milk commercial."

"Was not!"

"The ones I sent you?" Minori pointed at herself and then to the phone, "I'd forgotten that one was there! I'm so so so sorry Airi!"

#airi momoi #haruka kiritani #minori hanasato #writing #mmj writing #ask #prompt writing #not a quote

1 note · View note