The Dog Marketing Blog

Taylor Pond Farms is a raw food vendor with a booth at the Livonia Kennel Club and Oakland County Kennel Club dog show cluster in Novi Michigan in January. This was the second event the company had bought booth space and the second time they had been to the Rock Financial Showplace, the first time being for the Family Pet Expo in November, 2009.

The business didn’t start in pet food; owner Pete Moolhuizen got an idea to breed rabbits for meat for high-end restaurants on a trip to Europe. There he saw rabbit breeders doing well in that trade, so when he got back to the US, he started raising rabbits on their farm in Western Michigan. The business was doing well, and then one day he got a call from a dog owner asking what they did with the rabbit heads and feet, the parts that weren’t used by restaurants. At that time, they were just throwing them away. The dog owner offered to buy the leftover parts, word spread, and before long the business was offering a variety of meats strictly to pet owners. They had to stop raising their own rabbits because the demands of the business didn’t allow time to properly care for the animals.

Taylor Ponds sells through a network of distributors and their foods are strictly one-species per package, something that anyone who owns a dog with multiple allergies will appreciate.  They are not complete foods in and of themselves, but can be  fed as part of a raw diet along with other nutrients.  Except for these shows, the company relies on their distributors,  word of mouth and their website for promotion.

The Taylor Ponds website lists 10 different species of animal meat available, including rabbit, deer, duck, goat and fish. All meat is from US farms, except for some venison that is hunted. Their display at the dog show included a number of dehydrated treats including chicken and rabbit feet and beef trachea. The Moolhuizens found the serious dog people at the shows contained a higher proportion of raw feeders than the more pet-centric attendees at the Pet Expo.  Barb told me she was  surprised by requests for liver, which they  did not bring to the show. They plan to add more events to their marketing plan, next stop will be the Detroit Kennel Club show in March.

I attended the North American International Auto Show (NAIAS) in Detroit this morning and was able to see the Honda Element decked out with its Dog Friendly package. I’ve read about this option before in both the trade and dog-centric press, but this was my first opportunity to see it in person.  The package includes a soft sided crate anchored in the vehicle via a platform which sits a couple inches above the floor and encloses the area behind and below the seatback of the rear seats.  There is a collapsible ramp for the dog to walk up into the car and a fan in the rear compartment which directs air toward the crate. The car’s plastic floor cover is embossed with a bone design and all the seats have a dog-patterned seat covers which feel something like a wetsuit, I assume that this fabric is dog hair and slobber repellent.  A spill-resistant dish, collar and lead, tag, tote bag and poop bag dispenser are also included; buyers order custom sized items after purchase.

Free Standing Inserts

Marx Promotion Intelligence reported that overall Free Standing Insert (FSI) activity rose by 8% in 2009 to more than 272 billion coupons dropped. Pet retailers and pet products were important contributors to this increase.

• PetSmart rose from 4^th in 2008 to 2^nd in 2009 in terms of overall FSI pages; Target continues as the #1 retailer on this measure.
• Pet food and treats were in a three-way tie for sixth for the number of new products introduced via FSI in 2009 with 11, pet products rounded out the top ten with 8 new product introductions.
• Pet food and treats edged out household cleaning products to claim the #2 spot in number of coupons dropped in 2009; this was a 4% increase over 2008 levels.

The decline in the number of newspapers provides a challenge to the most traditional means of FSI distribution. Retailers and manufacturers are evolving to use targeted direct marketing to keep delivering  coupons to their customers.

The Pioneer Press reports on TwinCities.com about Minneapolis-St.Paul area animal shelters use of social media to publicize and place rescued pets. They discuss the social media strategies of the Animal Ark, Animal Humane Society, and the Minnesota Valley Humane Society All three organizations have established both Twitter and Facebook accounts. The AHS also has a YouTube channel and a Flickr account but these accounts are dedicated to the organization’s activities,  not specific adoptable animals.

All the organizations profiled seem to think that the social media outreach has resulted in more traffic to their adoptable animals’ pages, and the AHS has seen its donations increase, in a year when many charitable organizations have seen them fall.  Animal Ark cited several stories of animals adopted shortly after adding the “Add This” link sharing service to their profiles.  The MVHS feels that potential adopters  like the social media outreach, but the staff time to keep these additional sites updated is a drain on resources, free isn’t always completely free!