It's the kitty litter wars as the maker of "Super Scoop" sued the makers of "Fresh Step" for poo-pooing their product in TV commercials. The false advertising suit says that Clorox's "Fresh Step" wrongly claims that cats prefer Arm & Hammer's "Super Scoop" when "independently conducted research" shows it is a flawed study.
"The Clorox advertisements are unambiguous that the judges of whether Fresh Step is superior at eliminating odours are cats, not people," the suit says. "But cats do not talk, and it is widely understood in the scientific community that cat perception of malodor is materially different than human perception," the company argues. "It is not possible scientifically to determine whether cats view one substance to be more or less malodorous than another substance."
YouTube link.
The Manhattan Federal Court suit seeks to stop the commercial - called "Cats Jump into Boxes" - featuring Maru - and demands an unspecified amount of damages, saying the ad "intentionally misleads, confuses and deceives consumers. This message is false and deceptive because cats will not reject Super Scoop to any meaningful degree and will do so no more frequently than they will reject Fresh Step."
The study Clorox bases the ads on is "severely flawed" because it used eight cats at the same time and that those cats had access to only two litter boxes. "It is well known that inter-cat behavior can impact cats' use of a particular litter box in ways that have nothing to do with cat preference for or rejection of a particular litter," according to the suit.
2 comments:
"It is not possible scientifically to determine whether cats view one substance to be more or less malodorous than another substance."
As a cat owner, I take exception to that statement. If the box isn't cleaned frequently to your cats specs, they will damn sure let you know about it, ala pooping "near but not in" the box.
What agency produced the Fresh Step cat commercial called “Cats Jump into Boxes”, where cats prefer Fresh Step over another? At first the commercial ran with 3 cats then it ran with only 2 cats. The white cat, the last cat to come into the commercial scene got cut.
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