Westies & Besties – Little Hearts get the thumbs-up from Ricky Gervais

Ricky Gervais is known for his comedy and his brutal honesty, so when he spontaneously recommended Little Hearts, a cat treat product made by Vet’s Kitchen, the brand were thrilled. Although Ricky’s colourful attempts to create a new tagline may split opinion, the pet food brand agreed with him that “people would rather have honest advertising”*.

So instead of using professional copywriters for their advertising plans, they have scrapped the clever puns, soft-sell and complicated wording and instead will be asking customers to feature using their own words.

The campaign will start with a quote from Ricky’s recent podcast and customers will be called upon to submit their reviews via social media and above all be honest!

Vet’s Kitchen Managing Director, Laura Shears, explains, “One of our core brand values is honesty and it is funny that Ricky Gervais should give us such a fantastic prompt to consider how we reflect this through our advertising. Why make things complicated when the best endorsements are authentic and simple? I would like to thank Ricky for the mention in his podcast and whilst I would love to use his more creative suggestions, I have been outvoted!”

The line-up of new ads will include a simple photograph of a pet, with a quote from the customer … starting with Ricky Gervais’ tagline: “Little Stars. Decent dog treats.”

“We’ve decided to pare things back and ask real people what they think, even if we don’t get a polished answer,” Shears goes on to say. “For us, that’s honest advertising. At its heart, Vet’s Kitchen is a trusted brand, that prides itself on caring for our nation’s pets through quality dog food – why complicate things?”

Vet’s Kitchen will be also donating 50,000 meals to hungry cats and dogs around the UK over the coming months as per Gervais’ suggestion.

“Brands spend millions annually on ad campaigns touting caring credentials. Whilst we have always supported charities, we have again been prompted by Ricky to find ways to do more. We think our customers would prefer us to put our money where needy animals’ mouths are and will be pleased to hear we have donated these funds to charity instead,” Vet’s Kitchen Managing Director, Laura Shears, finishes.  

This article was first published in Westies & Besties.