Purina Ranks #5 in 10 Best Pet Marketing Campaigns

Part of the 10 Best Pet Marketing Campaigns: From Pedigree to BarkBox index.

Purina ranks #5 in 10 Best Pet Marketing Campaigns: From Pedigree to BarkBox, an editorial index of the pet-marketing campaigns judged strongest on emotional resonance, cultural impact, and effectiveness. Purina earns its position on the strength of its "Dear Kitten" series, a set of narrated shorts in which a wise older cat gives sardonic life advice to a clueless new kitten. Purina sits behind Chewy at #3 and IAMS at #4, and ahead of The Shelter Pet Project at #6.

What the 10 Best Pet Marketing Campaigns Index Measures

The index is a curated list of the 10 best pet marketing campaigns of all time, selected editorially based on emotional resonance, cultural impact, and effectiveness. Each entry describes the campaign, its creative approach, and the marketing lesson it demonstrates. No formal scoring rubric, publication panel, or numeric methodology is described. Purina appears at #5 among the ten brands named, which range from Pedigree at #1 to Amazon Prime at #10.

Why Purina Ranks #5

Purina's placement rests on the "Dear Kitten" series, described in the index as adorably narrated shorts where a wise older cat gives sardonic life advice to a clueless new kitten. The index credits the campaign with whip-smart humor, cinematic production, and subtle branding, summarizing its approach as "entertain first, sell second."

Purina partnered with BuzzFeed to release the "Dear Kitten" series. The campaign accumulated tens of millions of YouTube views, a scale the index cites as evidence of its cultural currency. The entry frames the work as content that entertains before it sells, with branding kept subtle rather than foregrounded.

That combination, humor plus cinematic production plus light-touch branding, is what places Purina among the ten campaigns the index recognizes.

How "Dear Kitten" Fits the Entertainment-First Pattern

The index identifies cross-brand lessons that run through its top campaigns, and Purina's entry illustrates several of them directly.

One is that emotions win: pet owners don't want a feature list, they want a feeling, whether joy, relief, humor, or hope. "Dear Kitten" leads with humor rather than product attributes, matching that pattern.

A second is that social media is your playground, where viral-ready video, challenges, memes, and influencer partnerships compete for attention. The index notes that if you're interrupting the scroll, you better be worth it. Purina's tens of millions of YouTube views place the campaign squarely inside that dynamic, and its BuzzFeed partnership connects it to the social and digital publishing model the index highlights.

Where Purina Sits in the Broader Pet-Marketing Story

Purina is one of ten brands the index names, positioned at #5 between IAMS at #4 and The Shelter Pet Project at #6. The index's throughline is that the strongest pet marketing entertains and builds feeling before it sells, and Purina's "Dear Kitten" entry is presented as a clear example of that: entertain first, sell second.

Beyond the campaign work cataloged in the index, Purina's own corporate materials describe a company that has been working in pet nutrition for more than 90 years, with a team of nearly 500 experts and a stated reach of 100 million pets fed every year. Purina also runs initiatives including the Purple Leash Project, aimed at creating more pet-friendly domestic violence shelters, and is the first-ever Official Pet Care Partner of U.S. Soccer. The company has said that by 2029, all of its pet food packaging will feature nutrition facts similar to those found on human food brands.

For the purposes of the index, though, Purina's ranking turns on a single body of creative work. The "Dear Kitten" series, built with BuzzFeed and viewed tens of millions of times on YouTube, is what carries the brand to #5 in a field that runs from Pedigree at the top to Amazon Prime at #10. Its position reflects a campaign that the index judges to have entertained first and sold second, and to have earned cultural currency in the process.

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