Nutro and BBDO New York Make the Case for Putting More Cat in Your Cat
Nutro's 'NUTRO puts more cat in your cat' is a 2021 film campaign created by BBDO New York that repositions pet nutrition as a force for expressing a cat's authentic personality, launching in the United States in October 2021 with a single hero video asset supported by social and digital executions.
The campaign marks a deliberate tonal shift for the brand. Where Nutro's earlier platform, 'NUTRO. FEED CLEAN.', introduced in 2017 according to reporting by petfoodprocessing.net, led with rational ingredient credentials and simple recipe transparency, the 2021 work trades that register for something warmer and more characterful. The central proposition — that Nutro's wholesome nutrition does not merely sustain a cat but actively amplifies what makes a cat a cat — reframes the product as an enabler of feline identity rather than a commodity purchase. The logic is straightforward: cat owners who see their pets as individuals with distinct personalities are primed to respond to a brand that mirrors that view back at them.
In the United States, the campaign targets the growing segment of cat owners who treat pet nutrition with the same scrutiny they apply to their own diets. The creative platform sits within the Narrative genre, building an emotional argument across film rather than relying on ingredient lists or veterinary endorsements. Clapboard has archived the campaign at a score of 60 out of 100, reflecting a competent and strategically coherent execution that stops short of category-defining creative ambition. The archive record, published October 1, 2021, documents one media asset reaching 3,244 views and 25 likes on the platform, positioning this as a focused rather than mass-reach activation within Nutro's broader natural-ingredient brand story.
Nutro anchors its 2021 strategy in a single consumer truth: cat owners do not experience their pets as animals that simply need feeding but as personalities that deserve nurturing. This insight shifts the competitive conversation away from ingredients and toward identity, a move that separates Nutro from rivals competing on functional claims alone.
In the United States, the pet food category is fiercely contested. Brands such as Purina Pro Plan and Hill's Science Diet have long competed on veterinary endorsement and clinical nutrition credentials, building authority through professional recommendation channels. Nutro's 2021 campaign, developed by BBDO New York, declines to fight on that ground. Instead, it leverages the emotional bond between owner and cat, arguing that food is not merely a health input but a medium through which a cat's truest nature is expressed. This is a meaningful strategic repositioning, moving Nutro further into values-led territory it first staked out with the 'FEED CLEAN' platform, as documented by The Drum.
The market context supports the ambition. According to petfoodindustry.com, the United States represents the world's largest single pet food market, and demand for natural and wholesome formulations has been a sustained growth driver across the category. The transition from rational 'Feed Clean' messaging to the more playful, emotionally resonant 'puts more cat in your cat' platform, noted in research compiled from mediapost.com and adsoftheworld.com, reflects a brand confident enough in its ingredient story to stop leading with it. By 2021, Nutro's natural positioning was sufficiently established that BBDO New York could build the campaign's entire argument on personality and vitality rather than on label transparency, letting the emotional narrative do the work that product claims had done in earlier years.
The campaign's creative execution centres on film as its primary medium. According to Little Black Book, the global 'NUTRO puts more cat in your cat' platform was directed by Guy Manwaring of production company Merman, bringing a specific visual sensibility to the task of making a cat food advertisement feel like a genuine character study.
The directorial challenge is considerable. Cat behaviour is inherently unpredictable, and communicating the idea that Nutro's food amplifies authentic feline traits requires footage that reads as observed rather than staged. Manwaring's approach, as the Narrative genre classification in Clapboard's archive confirms, leans into storytelling over demonstration, trusting the audience to make the inferential leap between the cats they see on screen and the product being advertised. This is a more sophisticated ask than category norms typically demand, where close-up product shots and palatability cues are the default grammar of pet food advertising.
BBDO New York's creative team structured the campaign around a single, repeatable verbal idea — 'puts more cat in your cat' — that functions simultaneously as a tagline, a product benefit, and a brand philosophy. The phrase carries genuine wit: it is circular in a way that rewards attention and absurd enough to be memorable without becoming opaque. Supported by social executions and banner ads, as documented in the campaign archive, the creative platform was designed to travel across formats while keeping the central emotional argument intact. The production's restraint — one hero asset, a tight verbal platform, and a clear point of view on what cats mean to their owners — reflects a confidence in the core idea that is characteristic of BBDO New York's approach to brand-building work in the United States.
No verified performance data for 'NUTRO puts more cat in your cat' — including sales lift, brand awareness movement, consideration scores, or return on advertising spend — is publicly available from Nutro, BBDO New York, or any third-party measurement source. The campaign has not been identified in the award records of Cannes Lions, the Effie Awards, The One Show, D&AD, the Clio Awards, the Webby Awards, or WARC Awards.
The Clapboard archive records 3,244 views and 25 likes for the campaign's primary asset, figures that reflect the platform's role as a professional creative archive rather than a consumer distribution channel. These numbers do not speak to the campaign's actual media reach across paid placements in the United States, which would have operated independently of the archive record.
Structurally, the campaign's effectiveness argument is coherent. The shift from the rational 'FEED CLEAN' platform to an emotionally driven brand idea is a recognised strategic pattern in maturing natural food categories, where ingredient parity among leading brands tends to reduce the persuasive power of functional claims. By investing in a repeatable, personality-led creative platform, BBDO New York gave Nutro an idea capable of sustaining multiple executions over time. The Clapboard Score of 60 out of 100 reflects a campaign that executes its brief with clarity and strategic logic, while falling short of the creative distinctiveness that earns industry recognition or documented cultural traction. For a brand operating in a crowded segment of the United States pet food market, the campaign represents a purposeful step toward emotional differentiation, even without measurable proof of commercial impact in the public domain.
'NUTRO puts more cat in your cat' is a 2021 film campaign created by BBDO New York for Nutro, published in the United States in October 2021. It positions Nutro's pet food as a product that enhances a cat's authentic personality and vitality rather than simply meeting basic nutritional needs, using emotional storytelling over ingredient-led claims.
BBDO New York created the campaign for Nutro. According to lbbonline.com, the broader platform was directed by Guy Manwaring of production company Merman. BBDO New York is the agency of record credited in the Clapboard archive for the United States version of the campaign, published in October 2021.
Nutro's 'FEED CLEAN' platform, introduced in 2017 according to petfoodprocessing.net, led with rational ingredient transparency and simple recipe credentials. The 2021 'puts more cat in your cat' campaign, created by BBDO New York, shifts to emotional, personality-driven storytelling, treating food as an amplifier of feline identity rather than a functional product.
The campaign received a Clapboard Score of 60 out of 100. This reflects a strategically coherent and clearly executed piece of work that stops short of category-defining creative ambition. The campaign has not been identified in the award records of Cannes Lions, the Effie Awards, D&AD, or the Clio Awards.
The campaign used online video as its primary format, supported by social executions and banner ads, as documented in the Clapboard archive. The hero film asset anchored the Narrative-genre platform, with the repeatable tagline 'puts more cat in your cat' designed to carry the brand's emotional argument consistently across all formats.
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