Yeowww! Catnip is known as the best catnip toys in the pet product world. Every piece is 100 percent organic and handmade in Minnesota. Always a top seller in boutique retailers across the globe, marketing manager Kris Kaiser and international sales manager Norm Harada share what they do to make sure they’re the cat’s meow when it comes to promoting their products.

If you can’t listen, here is the recap!

Alex: Today we have Kris Kaiser and Norman Harada from Yeowww Catnip Toys. You may know them from their famous catnip toy that looks like a banana. They make amazing products, but they’re also a great bunch of people, and we really do love them at the Whisker Report.

Norm, tell us a bit about yourself.

Norm: Oh, you ain’t got enough time there, kiddo. Well, I’m older than dirt, so I’m going to be 68 years old this year, but I don’t feel older than dirt. I’ve been working for Yeowww for nine years, and as you know, my sister and her husband started this company 27 years ago, and we’ve been doing the same thing for 27 years. I did a lot of other things before I worked for Yeowww, and my sister had mentioned to me several times, you should come and sell catnip toys. And I’m going, who in the world sells catnip toys for a living? It just sounded stupid to me. And so I finally decided, well, I’m ready to kind of slow down a little bit, take it a little more easy, have some fun.
And this is the best job I ever had in my life.
We sell fun here. It’s a great toy. It’s one of the number one catnip toys in the world. So I’m the international sales manager now for Yelp.

Mary: And that’s how you met Alex too.

Norm: Yeah, that’s how I met Alex through Kris, kind of. You know, just love her to death.

Alex: And now we’re best friends.

Mary: How about let’s have Kris talk about herself.

Kris: Yeah, I joined Yeowww more recently in 2018. They were looking for somebody who was really enthusiastic about cats. And they found me. So when the recruiter had called and said there was a company that makes pet toys, I was like, yeah, yeah, I’m interested. I had in the back of my mind, I had to figure out how to get into the pet industry somehow, because it just seemed like it would be a little more fun. So when I heard it was pet toys, I was like, yes, yeah, I’m interested. And then he said it was Yeowww catnip. I think I was, like, screaming with enthusiasm, because of course, you know, we had Yeowww toys all over my house, and I could imagine how I was going to make my cat’s dreams come true if I could land this job. So I came in with some enthusiasm and have been in the marketing department since 2018.

Norm: Yeah, huge asset to the company, Kris is.

Alex: How many furry kids do you have, Kris?

Kris: I have three, Rosie, Daisy and Calvin.

Alex: I love them.

Kris: They definitely are very happy with the amount of cat toys they get at home. And one of the more recent toys I even named after one of my cats, the Daisy’s Flower Tops.

Mary: And Kris is also a very talented photographer and a very, very influential influencer with an amazing page called Tippy Tuxies, where you promote CH cats, right? That’s cerebral hyperplasia.

Kris: So it affects the balancing coordination and we just like to show the cats with disabilities, they don’t really look at themselves as disabled, they just go about their life and do the same things normal cats do, they just move a little differently.

Mary: How often do you use your Instagram page with the marketing and PR of Yeowww?

Kris: I think it’s probably fairly organic. I mean, if we come out with a new toy, my cats might talk about that, but otherwise it’s just like, we just show their daily life and toys and playtime are probably the more fun parts to show.

Alex: Do you think you might be influencing other wobbly cats? Because if they see your cats playing with it and how the catnip makes them feel as wobbly cats, do you feel like you’re kind of influencing them?

Kris: Perhaps, but I think the notoriety of the banana goes well beyond my influence.
So they’re pretty Instagram or social media favorites toy because it incites that fun reaction and the cat’s going crazy is funny to show on video. So we probably get a lot of natural interactions and influence and yeah, promoter by nature of it being fun.

Mary: Yeah, Kris, can you talk a little bit about the marketing and PR strategies of Yeowww and kind of like what has worked for Yeowww and what hasn’t?

Kris: Sometimes it’s hard to get the metrics on what hasn’t worked. We’ve always just focused on fun. Like they haven’t really deviated from that side of things. It’s just more playful, kind of cartoon-like, just trying to tell a story with everything we do. And it’s not always focused on selling, but more on just getting attention and making people laugh. And the same with the toys. Like we really try to keep things bright and playful and a little bit silly and quirky.

Alex: I met you guys last year at CatCon. So I’d just like to know a bit about why are you guys attending it? What is the goal behind it? Is it brand awareness? Is it just to show how fun you are with your funny shirts with all the palm trees and everything on it?

Kris: Yeah, so the main goal was to get in front of consumers and hear what they had to say and also raise that brand awareness. The really interesting part, like our first KatKon, it’s probably a good mix of people who are already really familiar and just excited to see us there, and people who are like, what is that? They can smell the booth outside of the booth, they can see us because we’re bright yellow.
And so they’ll come in and there will be somebody in there already raving about how it’s their cat’s favorite toy. So sometimes the customers do a better job of selling than we do because they’re sitting there telling them that their cats are going crazy for these toys.

Mary: So Kris, can you talk a little bit about Tippy Tuxies, an Instagram account that is rescue based.
And especially for our animal welfare listeners out there, can you give us some tips and tricks on social media content?

Kris: Oh, so for me, I guess I just always kept it very natural and organic like our daily lives. But then, you know, a few years ago, following some of the trends really did help boost our social media. So if you’d see a certain trendy style of video, maybe you would, even if it was like people dancing, like you can kind of turn that into something funny with your cats. I think just keeping it authentic to who we were was our main tactic, but then maybe we would mix in some of the playful, funny, trendy stuff.
People tend to react to certain type of content. You see a lot of people who are really popular, if you look at their feed, they’re like posting the same, almost the same exact type of video. So like for myself, Daisy walking is one, and she walks very slow and purposefully, because if she tries to hurry, she falls over.
It’s just part of being a CH cat, and some are more affected than others. And for Daisy, she really has to slow down and think. And that video style always performs because people either are encouraging her or don’t understand and are asking questions. So paying attention to what’s performing well on yours and doing more of that, and then mixing in other stuff to constantly test to see what people want to see.

Mary: We’re getting to the end of the show, but wanted to ask you about working with brands. You’re kind of opinionated about staying true to who you and your cats are. Can you talk about that?

Kris: Yeah, I guess for me, I don’t want to talk about anything that we wouldn’t naturally use. We do sometimes try products that we haven’t used, but I tell brands that I can’t talk about them on my page until I have tried them. I generally won’t make a brand agreement with somebody if I’m not familiar with their product, or if they’re not willing to let us try it before we make that agreement. So that’s just something I guess I’ve been particular about because it does matter, right? Like I don’t want to tout something that my cats really don’t like and tell people it’s amazing if it’s not, and then have them be disappointed. There’s a space out there for any brand, I think, and even from the other side, when I’m working with Yeowww, like if I see somebody who’s already talking about us, they’re going to move to the top of the list of who we would partner with because I know it’s going to be authentic.

Alex: I think that’s one of the main takeaways with influencer marketing at the minute is to work with authentic influencers because the audience can also tell if you’re really true about the product or if you’re just being paid to talk about it.