Hasta La Creative!

It isn’t often in advertising that we get a happy ending that isn’t totally fictional and “brought to you by.“ But here one is, in all its furry glory!

In early May, we wrote about Glimpse Collective’s Kickstarter quest to replace all the ads in a London Underground station with images of cats. By the end of that month, U.K. animal rescue center Battersea joined forces with them, offering its cats up as models, in hopes that nice Londoners would experience love at first sight. 

Despite that endorsement, things weren’t looking good. In the last few days of their campaign, Glimpse—which created the Citizens Advertising Takeover Service, or #CatsNotAds—had raised $17,487, just over half of its objective (£23,000, or nearly $30,500). The company appealed to agency heads to provide rescue funds, and we closed our minds and hearts, awaiting the inevitable snuffing-out of a beautiful dream. 

But this week we discovered God exists, and loves us. On Monday morning, commuters passing through London’s Clapham Common Tube station were accosted by feline friends. 

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It can be exhausting to travel by subway, especially when you work in advertising. Subways are home to some of the grabbiest, ugliest creative in all of existence, often in multiples. 

To wit: Yesterday, while stepping out of the Paris Métro, I saw a billboard for the Chatons d’Or, or The Golden Kitten, a new tongue-in-cheek ad awards show. I was tired, not in the mood, and—worst of all—it put my brain back in work mode again, well after midnight. 

Given how many award shows we already have (I mean, did you know we even have one for TV interstitials? Those are literally ads to advertise your upcoming ad break), and how many other lowest-common-denominator inanities we’re subjected to when traveling to and from anywhere, we’re pretty receptive to this Kickstarter campaign to replace all the ads in one London tube station … with pictures of cats. 

Nothing else. Just cats. No $9.99 bikinis perched alongside gym memberships. No award shows, ironic or not. No blockbuster movie posters all in a row, punting an aged actor as a hilariously bad grandpa. Cats. Cats. 

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