What’s in this article:
- How rising pet ownership and spending has encouraged brands to get more creative with their messaging
- How pet brand advertising has shifted from the age of the TV jingle to influencer campaigns
Pets and social media are a natural combination. Pet brands have been quick to make the most of the space, shifting some of their biggest marketing pushes from TV jingles to the coordinated influencer campaigns of today.
This evolution takes on a new meaning in light of the recent spike in pet ownership worldwide, primarily due to the pandemic. According to the American Pet Products Association, for example, 70% of households in the US have at least one pet. Respectively, spending on pets in the US also reached a record of $103.6 billion in 2020, a number which is only projected to grow in the coming years.
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Here’s how pet brands have changed their marketing approach to stay part of this rapidly expanding market.
Merging TV commercials with timeline highlights
If you’re asking yourself how pet brands take over pet owners’ social media timelines, the answer is creative ideas. For example, one of the most followed animals globally, Nala the cat, links out to her very own food brand from the top of her official Instagram account. Meanwhile, Purina, a subsidiary of Nestlé which produces and markets pet food, turned heads with a highly-targeted Singaporean campaign, which paired up influencers who own a senior dog with its Pro Plan Bright Mind line, managing to drive $100,000 in revenue.
Moving into social media hasn’t meant leaving more traditional advertising mediums behind, but it has changed how pet brands approach them. Take the unusual example of Pretty Litter’s collaboration with RuPaul’s Drag Race, which sent cat-costumed drag queens voguing straight into an oversized litter box. It’s tough to imagine any big pet brand wanting to be associated with televised, rapid-fire bathroom jokes in the past. However, the hilarious stunt did its job of spurring viral video shares and incredulous conversations across the internet.
Building Connections and Sharing Memes
Perhaps one of the few universal truths is that pet parents love talking about their pets. Savvy pet brands take advantage of this by making their owned spaces a natural spot to share tips, tricks, and — most of all — laughs about the way animals touch our lives.
The Farmer’s Dog, which sells a range of dog food recipes, keeps much of its account focused on stories of pets, whether it’s pets in a loving relationship with their owners or animals in need of adoption. The Farmer’s Dog may publish several posts in a row that don’t mention their products, but its educational, fun content still appeals to dog lovers. When they start thinking about how to choose food for their pup, consumers may remember the helpful content in The Farmer’s Dog accounts and check out their offerings.
Brands like subscription delivery service BarkBox know there’s nothing more sharable than an animal meme. BarkBox even gets into meta territory by resharing its memes with new commentary from users across social media platforms. Chewy, an online retailer of pet food, also showed it knows the value of putting its pawprint on authentic conversations, with a series of designed tweets that framed National Love Your Pet Day in cheeky opposition to Valentine’s Day.
Old dogs, new tricks, and vice versa
The rise of pet brands on social media has helped give life to many ideas that may not have been easy to sell in a TV jingle. BarkBox capitalizes on the subscription box craze with unique toys and treats that customers can easily share on their timelines each month. As pet owners were re-dubbed pet parents, Pretty Litter seized the opportunity to elevate cat waste disposal with a more aesthetic-friendly option that can indicate health problems using color-changing chemistry.
The internet has embraced pet pics for as long as people have been able to upload images. It’s no surprise that pet brands found their own clever ways to join the party.