BuzzFeed, Friskies Turn ‘Dear Kitten’ Web Series Into Super Bowl TV Ad

BuzzFeed and Friskies know people like watching cats online. They also know people like watching the Super Bowl on TV. So, the media company and cat food brand have teamed up to make a 60-second Super Bowl ad based on their popular Dear Kitten web series, giving viewers in select locations animals to watch during commercials that aren’t the same old Budweiser Clydesdales.

The 60-second spot, dubbed “Dear Kitten: Regarding the Big Game,” is in the same vein as previous installments of Friskies and BuzzFeed’s web series. An older cat with little regard for humans explains to a young kitten how things get “weird” when the Super Bowl is on TV. The elder feline mocks how humans “compete” to see who can yell the loudest, and how they sit in positions which take away the most comfortable napping spaces.

The commercial will air locally during the February 1st Super Bowl in three cat-themed U.S. locations: Los Gatos, California; Kitty Hawk, North Carolina; and Pawnee City, Nebraska. A three-and-a-half minute version is available on BuzzFeed Video’s YouTube channel for viewers who prefer the longer, web series-style length.

According to AdWeek, this is the first time BuzzFeed has ever made a commercial specifically for linear TV purposes. It’s also the first time Friskies has chosen to run a Super Bowl ad (albeit in limited markets).

“We were thinking about doing the next installment in this franchise around tent poles, so we thought about doing Dear Kitten during the Big Game,” said Jonathan Perelman, vice president of BuzzFeed Motion Pictures (which formed in August 2014). “What I love about the Big Game is that it’s a place that people watch for the ads as much as they watch for the game itself.”

Perelman doesn’t think brands will immediately turn to digital creators to start making their Super Bowl ads due to Friskies and BuzzFeed’s initiative. But he does foresee that changing over time. “I’m sure it will happen in the future. Ideas will be incubated, data-driven online, and then it will move into campaigns we’ll see on air during the Big Game or other on-air events,” he said. “[Publishing online] is a way to build an audience, and you can simply move that into a different format, say, television.”

BuzzFeed and Friskies are channeling Will Ferrell and Old Milwaukee beer in this limited-release Big Game commercial initiative. The Funny or Die founder did local spots for the Pabst drink back in 2012, which only aired on select small and local stations across the Midwest. It was a savvy marketing initiative that paid off big dividends (as viewers captured the TV spots and uploaded them to YouTube, where they were viewed en masse) without costing the parties involved the kind of cash usually associated with Super Bowl commercials.

For the 2014 game, BuzzFeed and Friskies no doubt hope to replicate that success, and at a fraction of the $4 million per 30-second rate advertisers spend for nationwide commercial spots.