Ron Travisano, Adman Behind Singing Cats and Joe Isuzu, Dies at 86
She Was the Female Lead in His Film. Now She’s His Leading Lady.
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February 19, 2025This post was originally published on this site
The art director for Meow Mix and other memorable commercials, he began his career at the dawn of a creative revolution on Madison Avenue.
In the early 1970s, the madcap advertising executives Ron Travisano and Jerry Della Femina were struggling to find a gimmick to sell an undistinguished brand of pet food.
Watching interminable and unremarkable footage of cats eating, Mr. Travisano and an editor, Joe Lione, spotted one that kept opening and closing its mouth in a manner that appeared to simulate singing.
In fact, the cat was choking on its food. But in an eye-of-the-beholder eureka moment, the admen were inspired to create the classic singing-cat commercial that put Meow Mix on the map.
The endearing “Meow, meow, meow, meow” commercial for Ralston Purina — accompanied by the tagline “The cat food that cats ask for by name,” written by Mr. Travisano’s collaborators Neil Drossman and Bob Kuperman, who also came up with the name Meow Mix — won a Clio and other industry awards.
Nearly two decades after the ad debuted, The Times described it as having “one of the best known, most readily sung commercial jingles.” (The insistent meowing, mouthed by the singer Linda November, was presumably less endearing when played repeatedly to torture terrorism suspects at the U.S. prison compound at Guantánamo Bay.)
