Cat's Pride Goes for Olympic Gold With a Feline Twist
Cat's Pride launched "Go for the Medal" during the 2024 Summer Olympics, a television commercial that reframes everyday feline agility as Olympic-calibre athleticism to support the brand's positioning as "The Champion of Litter" across the United States.
Created by Chicago-based agency Two by Four, the spot aired from July 30, 2024, according to iSpot, running through August 2024 across broadcast television in the Midwest and East Coast of the United States. The campaign marks the second year of the agency's relationship with Oil-Dri Corporation of America, the parent company of Cat's Pride, a partnership that began in 2023. The commercial places cats centre stage as performers of Olympic-worthy stunts, drawing a direct creative analogy between the competitive spirit of the Games and the high-performance credentials of Cat's Pride litter — specifically its lightweight formula, superior instant and long-lasting odour control, and tight clumping properties.
The strategic intent is clear. By scheduling broadcast during one of the most-watched sporting events in the world, Cat's Pride sought to expand its reach beyond its established pet-owner audience and engage sports enthusiasts who may not have previously considered the brand. In the United States, the 2024 Summer Olympics represented a rare moment of broad, cross-demographic television attention, and Cat's Pride moved to capitalise on that cultural window. The tagline "The Champion of Litter" unifies the Olympic metaphor with the brand's functional claims, giving viewers a single, memorable phrase that carries both competitive and product meaning. The Clapboard Score for this campaign is 60 out of 100, reflecting competent execution of an opportunistic cultural moment against a relatively conventional creative framework.
Cat's Pride selected the 2024 Summer Olympics as its primary media context. That decision reflects a deliberate bet on appointment television at a time when live sports remain one of the few broadcast formats capable of delivering large, unduplicated audiences in a fragmented media landscape across the United States.
The cat litter category is a competitive one. Brands such as Tidy Cats, owned by Purina, and Fresh Step, owned by Clorox, command significant shelf presence and marketing budgets in the US mass market. According to GM Insights, North America accounted for approximately 40 to 42 percent of global cat litter revenue in 2024, underscoring the commercial significance of the US market that Cat's Pride was directly targeting. According to Data Bridge Market Research, clay litter represented approximately 57.8 percent of 2024 global category revenue — a segment in which Cat's Pride competes directly. Against that backdrop, securing broadcast inventory during the Olympics gave Cat's Pride a reach mechanism that digital-first competitors cannot easily replicate during a short, defined cultural window.
Two by Four's strategic rationale, as described publicly, centred on translating the high-octane excitement of the Games into a brand-relevant narrative for cat owners in the United States. The Olympics provided built-in emotional architecture — aspiration, effort, triumph — that the agency mapped directly onto the brand's functional claims. Rather than advertising in a neutral context, the campaign borrowed the emotional register of the event itself, giving a household product category a sense of occasion it would not otherwise command. This media-led strategy, anchored to a specific cultural moment, is the structural engine beneath the creative execution.
The creative premise of "Go for the Medal" is economical and direct. Cats perform athletic feats styled after Olympic disciplines, and those feats serve as a visual metaphor for the performance attributes of Cat's Pride litter.
Adam VonOhlen, Chief Creative Officer at Two by Four, described the project publicly as a rewarding experience, noting the team's pride in showcasing Cat's Pride in a new light during the Olympics. His statement signals that the campaign represented a deliberate creative evolution for the brand under Two by Four's stewardship, which began in 2023. The spot was published on July 30, 2024, according to iSpot, placing it at the opening of the Paris Games' broadcast window in the United States — a scheduling choice that maximised exposure during peak viewer interest.
The production deploys cats as performance athletes, a casting choice that serves both tonal and strategic purposes. Cats are inherently watchable, and their natural movement vocabulary — sudden bursts of speed, precise landings, fluid agility — maps credibly onto the visual language of Olympic sport without requiring heavy post-production artifice. The tagline "The Champion of Litter" lands as the creative payoff, collapsing the athletic metaphor and the product claim into a single phrase. Per Muse by Clios, Two by Four subsequently developed a 2025 campaign featuring oversized kaiju-style cats to dramatise odour and litter weight, suggesting the agency has continued to build on an animal-performance creative platform established by "Go for the Medal." Production credits for the "Go for the Medal" campaign beyond Adam VonOhlen's documented role as Chief Creative Officer at Two by Four are not publicly documented in available sources.
Cat's Pride broadcast "Go for the Medal" across the Midwest and East Coast of the United States during the 2024 Summer Olympics period, according to Clapboard. The regional broadcast strategy concentrated the campaign's media weight in markets where the brand holds established retail distribution, balancing reach ambition with spend efficiency.
No independently verified viewership figures, brand-lift measurements, or sales uplift data for "Go for the Medal" are publicly available at the time of writing. What the structural evidence does support is that the campaign operated with several compounding advantages: Olympic broadcast inventory delivers some of the highest co-viewing rates in US television; the pet care category commands strong impulse consideration among engaged viewers; and the "Champion of Litter" tagline provides a durable recall mechanism that extends beyond the broadcast window. According to Premier Market Insights, the global cat litter market is estimated at approximately 5.1 billion US dollars in 2024, growing at a compound annual growth rate of 5.5 percent through 2034, with the United States representing its largest single national market. Cat's Pride, as a mass-market clay-litter brand, operates directly within the category segment that, according to Data Bridge Market Research, represented approximately 57.8 percent of global revenue. Competing for attention against Tidy Cats and Fresh Step during a high-profile national media moment represents a meaningful strategic move for a brand of Cat's Pride's scale. The Clapboard Score of 60 out of 100 reflects the campaign's functional coherence and cultural opportunism, tempered by a creative framework that, while well-executed, does not substantially depart from category conventions.
"Go for the Medal" is a 2024 television commercial by Cat's Pride that aired during the Summer Olympics in the United States. Created by Two by Four, the spot features cats performing Olympic-style athletic feats to promote the brand's litter under the tagline "The Champion of Litter," connecting feline agility to product performance claims including odour control and lightweight formula.
Two by Four created the "Go for the Medal" campaign for Cat's Pride. The Chicago agency began its relationship with Oil-Dri Corporation of America, Cat's Pride's parent company, in 2023. Adam VonOhlen served as Chief Creative Officer on the project and publicly described the Olympic campaign as a rewarding creative experience for the agency and brand.
The spot was published on July 30, 2024, according to iSpot, and ran through August 2024. Broadcast distribution covered the Midwest and East Coast of the United States, timed to coincide with the 2024 Summer Olympics. The regional strategy concentrated media weight in markets where Cat's Pride holds established retail presence, both in-store and online.
Cat's Pride emphasises three core claims in "Go for the Medal": a lightweight formula, superior instant and long-lasting odour control, and tight clumping performance. These functional attributes are framed through the Olympic metaphor, with the tagline "The Champion of Litter" anchoring all product messaging to a competitive, achievement-oriented brand positioning throughout the United States campaign.
The Clapboard Score for "Go for the Medal" is 60 out of 100. The score reflects the campaign's functional coherence and effective use of the 2024 Summer Olympics as a cultural platform in the United States, balanced against a creative framework that, while competently executed, does not significantly depart from established household product advertising conventions.
"Go for the Medal" represents the first major campaign Two by Four produced for Cat's Pride following the agency's appointment in 2023. It established an animal-performance creative platform that the agency continued in 2025 with a kaiju-cat campaign addressing odour and litter weight, per Muse by Clios, suggesting "Go for the Medal" served as a creative foundation for subsequent Oil-Dri brand communications.
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