To celebrate Take Your Cat to the Vet Day, the makers of WHISKAS® have created Cat Calm Radio, a radio station broadcasting music designed to have a calming effect on your cat on the way to the vet.
Despite the curious nature of cats, most get seriously stressed out in the car. This stress on both the cat and owner means cats visit the veterinarian much less often than dogs; contributing to an array of health problems that can develop going unchecked.
Providing some songs to help keep your cat calm, the makers of WHISKAS® are is launching Cat Calm Radio on Take Your Cat to the Vet Day on August 22. As a species-specific radio station, the music on Cat Calm Radio is designed to have a calming effect on your cat on the way to the vet.
Broadcasting online at CatCalmRadio.com, and created in partnership with the WHISKAS® brand’s advertising agency, BBDO Toronto, the station plays a continuous stream of music created by species-specific musician David Teie.
Each track is composed using a series of calming noises that have a calming effect on your cat. “All the music we hear is designed for humans, based on our vocalizations and development. Based on that understanding of composition, it only makes sense that if you use the same recipe used in human music but use ingredients that have been tailored to another species, you can create effective music for that species,” says David Teie, the composer who discovered that music must be species-specific to be effective.
Teie’s music is based on the theory that every species has an intuitive biological response to sounds based on their brain development and vocalizations. He took the principles that humans use for making music and applied it to the sounds and development cycles unique to different species.
For instance, humans respond so viscerally to the beats of music because we were exposed to our mother’s pulse while our brains were developing in the womb. Cats, however, are not exposed to the mother’s pulse because the cat’s brain is only 1/8th the size at birth of what it will be at 10 weeks, meaning the basic principle of human music, the beat, doesn’t resonate with felines the same way. Based on this developmental understanding, Teie used the sound of suckling for milk in place of the pulse in the music he created for cats.
Teie’s theory of composing music for cats with feline-centric sounds was corroborated by an independent study conducted by the University of Wisconsin and published in Applied Animal Behaviour Science. Researchers verified that Music for Cats resonates conclusively with its audience, writing that “cats showed a significant preference for and interest in species-appropriate music.”
The makers of WHISKAS® believe this music will give cat owners a tool that will have a calming effect on their cat on the way to the vet, increasing vet visits and helping to keep their cats healthy and curious. Although Cat Calm Radio was launched to coincide with Take Your Cat to the Vet Day, the soothing sounds of Cat Calm radio will continue to be available to cat owners 24-hours a day at CatCalmRadio.com.
CREDITS:
WHISKAS® Cat Calm Radio
Campaign name: Cat Calm Radio
url: www.catcalmradio.com
Client: WHISKAS® Cat Mainmeal, Mars Petcare
Brand Director, Cat & Dog Mainmeal: George Fung
Marketing Intern, Cat Mainmeal: Christie Stelling
Brand Manager, Cat Mainmeal Wet: Marisa Law
Senior Brand Manager, Cat Mainmeal Dry: Sonia Munn
Creative Agency: BBDO Toronto
Chief Creative Officer: Todd Mackie
Chief Creative Officer: Denise Rossetto
Associate Creative Director: Derek Blais
Copywriter: Daniela Marino
Art Director: Cassandra Shuber
VP, Project Management: Jason Dick
Sr. Project Manager: Sarah Ng
Group Account Director: Sonia Ruckemann
Account Supervisor: Dan La Cute
Account Executive: Jia Cau
VP Strategy: Tom Kenny
About Whiskas
As the makers of WHISKAS® we have been making food for cats since 1958 and we use this experience in everything we do. Not only are we committed to developing delicious products, we’re devoted to helping all cats live healthy and happy lives.
WHISKAS® cat food is there for the whole journey – as your cat grows with us, we are constantly looking for ways to improve our nutrition and care.
About David Teie
David Teie was born into a musical family, spanning three generations of professional musicians.
David Teie comes from a long line of musicians. As a cellist, he has given eighteen solo performances with the National Symphony Orchestra including a U.S. tour under Russian maestro Mstislav Rostropovich, who chose David to become a member of that orchestra. As acting principal cellist of the San Francisco Symphony in 1999, he played lead cello on Metallica’s album, S&M. From 2014 – 2016 he was the conductor and music director of Washington D.C.’s premier chamber orchestra, the Eclipse Chamber Orchestra, and currently serves on the faculty at University of Maryland’s School of Music. Both his research and theoretical work have been published by the Royal Society in Biology Letters and by Oxford University Press in Evolution of Emotional Communication. His invention of species-specific music was described by the New York Times as the number one idea of 2009.
About BBDO Toronto
BBDO Canada (www.bbdo.ca) manages the communication needs of many of Canada’s largest and best-known brands and has consistently earned a creative reputation that places it among the top creative agencies in Canada. BBDO Canada is a subsidiary of BBDO Worldwide, which is part of Omnicom Group Inc. (NYSE:OMC) (www.omnicomgroup.com), a leading global advertising, marketing and corporate communications company.
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