The saying goes something like “Dogs are a man’s best friend.” Well,
now it holds true for marketers!
Last year, the pet industry was a $35.9 billion business, up from $34.4
billion in 2004 and a meager $21 billion a decade ago, according to the
American Pet Products Manufacturers Association. An estimated 4.2
million American households have horses, 37.7 million have cats, and
43.5 million have dogs.
Turn on your TV and you’re bound
to see dogs in many commercials that have nothing to do with dog food
or other pet products. They have to do with lifestyle and targeting a
product/service to an appropriate audience who relates to that.
Given the popularity of dogs and other pets it is no wonder that the
media has responded with programming about dogs. And the advertising
industry has increasingly not only mounted big ad campaigns for
products and services for dog owners, but has featured dogs in ads for
products.
It's a way of helping to characterize the target market and create a
warm, receptive consumer audience, because of the appeal of dogs.
Sahalie, a camp & cabin supplies catalog and Web site, responded to
their shoppers’ needs by featuring dogs in many product photos. “From
surveys, we know that a large percentage of our customers have dogs,”
says Creative Director Rich Lorimor. “We use other animals once in a
while, but people don’t respond as much. Dogs hit the widest array of
pet lovers.”
So, consider surveying your customers to see if they are pet lovers.
Then, perhaps man’s best friend can bring you the “fetching” results
you’ve been hoping to retrieve with your marketing efforts. Give it
some thought when developing your marketing plan.
“The growing number
of ads featuring dogs are designed to use their
appeal to increase the favorable attitude toward the product or service
featured. Such ads use the power of association to cast the
featured product in a more favorable light, much in the way an
advertiser might use a celebrity endorsement to draw on the power of
that celebrity.”
– www.worldofdogs.org
Debra Jason is a former president of the Rocky Mountain Direct Marketing Association. A longtime Boulder businesswoman, she now runs The Write Direction from the island of Kauai, Hawaii. She may be reached at (808) 826 1846 or visit her online at www.writedirection.com.
©Copyright 2007 Debra Jason dba The Write Direction. All rights reserved.
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