Marketing Musings of a Dog Enthusiast
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 … Read more
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 4th in 2008 to 2nd in 2009 in terms of overall FSI pages; Target continues as the #1 … Read more
Petfood Industry reports news from Tyson Foods fourth quarter earnings report regarding its Freshpet line of refrigerated pet foods. Freshpet is currently in test rollout with national retailers and is reportedly finding high consumer acceptance; club stores are next in their distribution plans. The Freshpet website describes the product as lightly cooked and emphasizes that … Read more
Petfood Industry reported that Halo pets has signed on as a sponsor for Freekibble.com’s iPhone app, Kibble Katch. Freekibble donates 10 pieces of kibble for each click on a trivia game on their site. The food is donated by corporate sponsors which manufacture premium natural petfoods, including Castor & Pollux and Canidae on the Freekibble … Read more
DMNews reported on Petco‘s use of email marketing, including the recent addition of content promoting organic pet foods. These emails are supported by in-store seminars about organic foods as well as the Petco-sponsored Facebook page, Generation Natural Pet. The article goes on to describe more details of the Petco e-communications strategy including species targeting, pet … Read more
This article isn’t directly about dog food, but may give the industry some food for thought. USATODAY recently reported on comments critical of Kellogg’s for labelling Cocoa Krispies cereal with a claim that the cereal boosts immunity. If you do a Google search on dog food and immunity, over 150,00 results appear, including links to … Read more
I recently got my first email from Petcentric with a link to their site, which launched in 2006. In a 2008 article in Promo Magazine the site is described as a social network, however most of the content is provided by the site’s owner, Purina and select partners, such as Yahoo! Answers (pet section.) There … Read more
Latest sighting in the humanization of dogs trend – my latest Dogs in Canada newsletter has arrived with an article about dog beers. The article profiles three dog-targeted brews, Kwispelbier from the Netherlands, Australia’s Dog Beer created by an enterprising pet retailer, and the US entry, Bowser Beer. Bowser Beer even has its own Facebook … Read more
As premium dog food brands which claim to use higher quality and more appealing ingredients grow in market share, some traditional market leaders are pushing back in court. Hill’s Pet Nutrition, which produces Science Diet brand pet foods, has been aggressively pursuing manufacturers which it feels have used deceptive advertising for their products. Blue Buffalo … Read more
Packaged Facts announced the publication of a new report analyzing the need for products targeted at senior pets, overweight pets and special needs pets in the US. The report notes that according to American Veterinary Medical Association and Association for Pet Obesity Prevention research, the proportion of American pets in these groups is higher than … Read more