The project, the Citizens Advertising Takeover Service (CATS), is the first idea from Kickstarter user Glimpse, which describes itself as "a group of creative people who want to use our skills for good".
As of this morning, CATS had raised more than £5,000 by offering rewards including t-shirts, a cat-themed browser ad-blocker, and the chance for £100 or more, the chance to have your own cat featured in one of the pictures, at various levels of prominence.
Glimpse says it has spoken to both London Underground owner TfL, and "a couple of the bigger ad companies", and has arrived at the figure of £23,000, which would pay for a full platform’s worth of posters at one of the tube’s smaller stations. It is hoping to exceed the goal, however, and buy out a full station site. The posters will stay up for two to three weeks.
The rationale behind the scheme may make alarming reading for marketers, even dedicated cat lovers.
The campaign page outlines two motivations for the idea: "it would look amazing", and "it’s exhausting being asked to buy stuff all the time."
It goes on to say: "This is about trying something, flexing our collective voice in the most idiotic of ways. From all this madness something amazing could happen. Perhaps we'll start to realise that buying stuff isn't making us happy.
"Maybe cats won't make us happy either, but it’s got to be better than insurance adverts. Maybe during this moment of cat related calm we might have a brilliant thought, or a dumb one or even... spend a moment thinking about nothing at all."
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