Wigs for cats

Promotional video created to launch a new book, Glamourpuss: The Enchanting World of Kitty Wigs.

I stumbled across Julie Jackson, creator of Subversive Cross-Stitch and Kitty Wigs, and reached out saying I would love to create something for Kitty Wigs (they had a few pics and links to purchase the wigs). She mentioned they were close to releasing a book and they could use a video to help promote the book & get attention. I was in!

With a budget of $0.00 & a crew of me, I used an old borrowed camera & mic and I leaned into the no budget DIY look/feel/approach (off the cuff, fly on the wall, unpolished…real), re-enacting photoshoots, playing into the randomness from cat owners featured in the book.

This was 2009, early social media & fun YouTube vs what what the space is today, so discoverability was limited. If no one even sees the video, then what’s the point, so I started reaching out to magazines, websites, local publications, zines, posting the video everywhere I could. It worked and started to get traction.

Soon, the video & book started getting writeups on Glamour, Jezebel, CBS News, NBC DFW, Laughing Squid, BoingBoing and many others.

Then, it just blew up — Kitty Wigs was being discussed everywhere including G4TV’sAttack of the Show, Late Night with Conan ‘O Brien, Good Morning America, BBC News, the Late Show with David Letterman, the Graham Norton Show, the Colbert Report, CNN’s Anderson Cooper 360, People Magazine, and ABC News.

The video was featured on TruTv’sThe Smoking Gun Presents: World’s Dumbest Inventions (comedians including Chelsea Peretti from ‘Brooklyn 99’ poking fun at the video (amazing)!)

Animal Planet’s “Must Love Cats”(S1, E3 - Kitty Wigs and Fat Cats) sent out a crew to recreate my video, filming the same people, at the same locations, doing the same things & setups I captured, even having some of the cat owners deliver the same lines (but with a much larger crew). Cool to see this recreation-of-sorts!

Even years later the video still had traction — in 2012 a Canadian telecom company reached out & licensed video clips for their tv commercials. And in 2014 Samsung reached out & licensed a video clip for a holiday tv spot/campaign with Kristen Bell & Dax Shepard (the final spots went with a different animal video clip).

The video was a HUGE success in helping get this book attention & reach and is now in it’s 4th printing (shoutout to Chronicle Books).