The Dog Marketing Blog

MediaPost reports that Subaru is sponsoring the American Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals (ASPCA) Prevention of Cruelty to Animals month in April. The car brand joins Dogpile.com and Clorox (Fresh Step) as sponsoring a number of events across the USA to support the ASPCA’s Mission: Orange. Mission Orange targets specific communities to reduce euthanasia rates among the most at-risk (homeless) animals. The site describing the program does not specifically mention no-kill as a strategy, but seems to support that philosophy, which aims to rehabilitate and place animals where possible rather than euthanizing animals simply based on length of stay or number of animals in custody.  Subaru has a history of marketing to pet owners by supporting rescue organizations and offering pet-friendly vehicle accessories during its partnership with LL Bean which ran from 2000-2008.

MediaPost reports that Purina and Oddcast have developed an application called Beggin Time which allows people to place themselves and a pet in a dance video which can in turn be emailed or “go viral” as we marketing folks like to say. The article refers to it as a Facebook app, but I could only request to be its friend from the Facebook side, I found it on the Beggin Strips website.  You pick your own human and pet face and then they dance to the Beggin Time “Can’t Top This” song sung to the tune  of  “You Can’t Touch This.”  It is indeed fun and I couldn’t resist sending it via the Facebook and email options  to several friends.

Tyson Foods recently announced they purchased a minority stake in Freshpet, a manufacturer of refrigerated pet food. This news inspired Packaged Facts, to send an e-direct reminder about their Fresh Pet Food in North America study which was released in July, 2008.  Freshpet will apparently gain access to Tyson’s distribution network and manufacturing facilities, while Tyson gains an interest in a pet food manufacturer in a growing sector of the market.  I would think Freshpet will also look to Tyson for sourcing of some ingredients.   Freshpet dog foods are formulated to meet  Association of American Feed Control Officer (AAFCO) standards for dog nutrition.   Their website also notes that the food is Pasteurized All Natural Nutrient Dense food. The pasteurization would alleviate concerns some people have about bacteria levels in raw pet food.  The only place I could find a definition for PAN food was Wikipedia, which makes me think it’s a marketing term rather than a actual standard in the pet food industry.

The Truth About Pet Food reported on a pet food class action lawsuit that was thrown out in Nevada.  Owners who purchased WalMart’s house brand Ol’ Roy canned food felt deceived by the product’s “Made in USA” language on the label. This product was one of those that included  Chinese ingredients tainted with melamine.  The  judge’s ruling in the case said it could only go forward if each and every consumer had purchased the product based solely on the “Made in USA’ claim and apparently the judge felt they had not.  With my marketing hat on, I can see his point, the price, distribution and flavor of the dog food probably were greater influences on the initial purchase. By the time the Chinese ingredients were implicated I suspect affected product was off the shelves – and that’s when the USA claim would have had more appeal.  I also suspect, to use an automotive analogy that the product was “assembled” in the USA.   I understand from what I’ve read in the Whole Dog Journal and Pet Food Politics, very few people in the pet food manufacturing process know exactly where ingredients come from; and fewer are willing to share the information. From a pet owner standpoint,  this is a disappointing decision in that it shows how difficult it is to get accurate information about commercial pet foods.

I got a new Twitter follower overnight, Spongetech.  New to Twitter, but busy they’ve managed to follow 2000 Twits in something like 6 hours. Makes my neck and wrists stiff just thinking about it! Their products are sponges embedded with soap designed for different purposes, including the Uncle Norman’s Pet Sponge.  Now it’s not a good idea to pour shampoo directly on your dog (it gets into the hair pores and comes back out as dandruff) so it’s a good idea from that standpoint. The dog pictured on the website has enough hair that I’m a concerned that rubbing with a sponge could form tangles, but since I have short haired dogs it could work for me. This product begs for line extensions since there are so many varieties of dog shampoo on the market.  My requests are for hypo-allergenic and whitening formulas. The whole Spongetech concept is reminiscent of a SoapSponge I received as a gift from Mermaid’s Bath last fall which was a sea sponge impregnated with fragrant bath soap.

Adele Yunck, owner of Northfield Dog Training, is having some professional photography taken of her facility for use on the NDT website. Betsy Finn of Betsy’s Photography is doing this work and was laying on the floor taking photos of Adele’s Open and Utility Proofing class doing their long downs when Anna and I arrived for the Novice Proofing class last Wednesday evening.  Some of the photos are now up on Betsy’s site as she blogs about the experience. Betsy is also on Twitter. It’s amazing how good she can make a pole barn (nice training facility that it is) look from the outside!

While searching for gifs to use in my next web project,  I came across  Tiles with Style, a ceramic tile vendor that features, among other things, ceramic dog paw prints that can be inset into a ceramic tile wall or floor.  Incredibly cute!  My husband doesn’t agree, so I don’t think I’ll be able to sneak them into that master bath remodel that I’d like someday.  If dog paws aren’t enough for you, biscuits, fire hydrants and even cat paws are also available.

As promised,  I’m returning to my Detroit Kennel Club vendor interviews with a profile of  Smucci custom pet beds. The owner/artist Debi Kahn was doing interior decorating when she got the idea for making beautiful furniture that doubled as pet furniture. She blogs about her DKC experience and includes some great photos from the event. Some of the inspiration came from her own pets; one of her cats likes to nap in the bowl shaped washbasins in her home, so she created wooden bowl beds for cats.  Debi used some of her own photographs to create the fabric designs used in most of the beds; the photos are transferred to fabrics using a very high quality printing process that retains that photographic quality feel. The wooden bases for the beds have an artistic flair as well. Most have a high fashion modern art look, but one resembles a manger and the accompanying pillow is printed with a design based on a photograph of a slice of straw bale.   Most of the beds unfortunately would probably not withstand the presence of a young Bull Terrier, but I’m sure  many smaller and older pets would enjoy these artful comforts. Wonderful to see another person making pet furniture that fits in to a stylish decor.

I’ve been thinking about launching a website as my own educational playground and have finally landed on a topic – reviewing tough dog toys – and purchased a domain name.  So I’ve been tooling around the web looking at review sites looking for design ideas.  Couldn’t find any dog toy sites that really stuck my fancy so I decided to check out baby toy sites and ended up on a general review site called Viewpoints.  Baby pages featured a classic review/ecommerce site design, then I noticed they had a pet section, so I clicked to look at that (exact same layout, naturally.)  But here I found something interesting – dog owner reviews of  their dog breeds.  The sidebar promised there were 232 reviews, but clicking on it revealed these were spread across just 38 breeds.  What I found interesting was that on a 5 point scale, the lowest score was a  4.0 – for the  “Shitz Tsu” (people who correctly spelled the breed name, Shih Tzu scored it at 4.64) and most were around 4.8.  I guess no one wants to spread a cautionary tale – or kept a dog they’d rate lower than a 4.0.  Actually I noted some of the lower ratings were by people who didn’t own the breed, but knew someone who had one they didn’t like.  The most reviewed dog was the  American “Pitt” Bull Terrier with 37 reviews, for the most part glowing reviews with quite a few pit rescuers represented.

The AKC announced today a promotion with Motel 6 which offers a 10% discount off stays at Motel 6 and Studio 6 motels. The official rules state that this is limited to one pet per room, which is the standard policy for Motel 6.  I think it is actually one “small” pet, which my friend Lisa and I joked about incessantly the time we stayed at a Motel 6 on the way back from our national specialty in St Louis with 3 Bull Terriers ranging in size from 50 to 70 pounds.  If they enforce the number of pets this isn’t going to be a great policy for people travelling to dog shows as they often take more than one, but it’s good to see a motel chain taking a pro-dog position by reducing rather than raising rates for people travelling with their dogs.