Newspapers save a brand

Newspaper advertising save Felix Cat Food from being de-listed and turn it into one of the UK's fastest growing brands.

Case study summary

Newspaper advertising proved to be a highly cost effective way to boost sales with a limited advertising budget. The ads increased rate of sale, reduced price sensitivity, and helped gain extra distribution, saving the brand from de-listing and providing the basis for a decade of steady growth. 

The marketing issue

Back in the late 1980s, Felix was a minor player in the UK cat food market. At that time, Whiskas dominated the market, with a massive 50% market share. By contrast, Felix's share was a mere 6%, and hadn't shown any signs of growth since the 1970s.

By 1989, the brand was facing a crisis. Retailers were keen to devote more shelf space to high margin super-premium brands (like Sheba) and to their own label products, and less to standard brands like Felix. And of the half dozen or so standard brands they stocked, Felix was one of the smallest, making it a prime candidate for de-listing.

Quaker, who owned Felix at the time, decided to take action. They would re-launch Felix, with a new can and three new flavours, and support the re-launch with Felix's first-ever advertising campaign. The aim was to increase market share to 10% within two years, and thereby save the brand from being de-listed.

Why national newspapers?

The budget for the first year's advertising was small: a mere £250k. By contrast, Whiskas was spending over £10m a year. That meant that Whiskas was spending the equivalent of Felix's annual budget every eight days. 

Clearly, the advertising would need to work very hard if it was going to achieve Quaker's ambitious growth targets in the face of such intense competition. BMP DDB, Quaker's advertising agency, decided that national newspapers would be the most efficient medium to use:

  • TV was saturated with cat food ads, but nobody was using newspapers. Using a different medium would help Felix stand out. The ads would use a different style too: a mischievous black and white cartoon cat, called Felix, rather than the usual glossy colour shots of pampered cats favoured by the competition. The cartoon style suited the medium perfectly

  • The low cost of newspaper advertising meant that Felix could afford to advertise all year round, maximising the probability that the ads would catch owners at those crucial times when their cats got bored of their usual food

  • Using small, mono spaces allowed a great deal of flexibility in terms of positioning. In line with the brand's mischievous personality, Felix ads could pop up in the most unexpected places

  • Low production costs made it possible to run many different executions (over 30 in the first year alone). These would help flesh out Felix's personality, make the brand look bigger than it actually was, and keep the campaign fresh

  • Low production costs and short deadlines also made it possible to run cheekily topical ads at short notice
    Newspaper campaign esults


Campaign result on sales

As soon as the first newspaper ads appeared, sales began to rise, and kept rising:

  • Over the first two years, sales volume increased by 60%, making Felix the fourth fastest growing grocery brand in any category

  • The target of 10% market share was met eight months ahead of schedule, taking Felix from fifth biggest brand to third biggest


These achievements were all the more impressive given that the price of Felix was increasing relative to the competition. Econometric analysis suggests that the advertising actually helped reduce price sensitivity, enabling Quaker to charge higher prices for the brand.

Impressed by these rapid increases in rate of sale and the higher margins they were now getting, retailers abandoned plans to de-list Felix. In fact, after a year or so of rising sales, retailers actually began to increase the amount of shelf space they devoted to Felix, which helped push sales up even further. 

Changes to the product and packaging obviously contributed to the brand's success at this time, but analysis shows that the contribution of newspaper advertising was even greater:

  • The timing of the sales growth matched the timing of the newspaper ads to the month, whereas the new can and the new flavours had been launched several months earlier

  • Regional differences in sales growth correlated very closely with regional differences in the readership of the advertised press titles

  • Penetration increased most strongly amongst readers of the advertised press titles

  • Econometric analysis clearly shows that press advertising was the biggest factor driving sales and distribution growth at that time, and that the advertising was highly cost-effective. The extra profits generated from increased sales paid for the advertising several times over.


With higher sales revenues, extra budget eventually became available to extend the campaign, first to more newspapers, then to TV, and then to posters. As a result, sales eventually more than quadrupled and Felix displaced Whiskas as the number one brand, a staggering achievement given Whiskas total domination of the market back in the 80s. None of this would have been possible if it hadn't been for a cheeky little cartoon cat that first popped up in the newspapers back in 1989.

Learn More

Download a powerpoint of the case study below. For more case studies on newspaper advertising effectiveness, visit the NMA UK website.

Case study into Felix newspaper advertising campaign (505k, PowerPoint (.ppt) format)