Dogs may be man’s best friend, but until recently, we weren’t feeding our furry friends like they were family members. For decades, dog food was, at best, an afterthought. Fido only ate what a family could afford, and that was that.
But as people started paying more and more attention to Fido’s belly, the focus on dog food began to move from good to gourmet, with a bevy of brands offering pet owners more food with premium ingredients. On top of that, the spate of pandemic-era dog adoptions only served to intensify this trend, and pet food brands responded by increasing their investment in TV advertising for their premium gourmet products.
But what makes customers choose one brand over another? If pets pull at our heartstrings, what kinds of ads pull at our pocketbooks, getting people onto their phones or computers to learn more about the best pet food brands?
At EDO, we measure the effectiveness of television advertising by using real-time TV data and a proprietary model to evaluate how likely a consumer is to engage online with a brand after seeing its ads on TV. After all, it’s not enough for a consumer to see an ad—if you want to drive sales, for example, the consumer needs to take action toward making a purchase.
Recently, we used our measurement tools to analyze TV ads in the pet food category from January through April 2023. Read on to discover what we learned, including more information about pet food advertising growth, The Farmer’s Dog’s successful Super Bowl investment, and Blue Buffalo’s campaign to “humanize” pets.
Pet food brands are seizing opportunities with increased TV advertising
As noted earlier, the pet food category is one of the hottest markets in TV advertising. From January through April 2023, pet food ads aired on national TV more than 115,700 times. And these ads created more than 46 billion impressions—a 48% increase over the same period in 2022.
Leading the way were three key brands that were most responsible for the category’s increase in TV advertising during the first four months of 2023:
- Blue Buffalo: 12.2 billion impressions, up 112% YoY
- Purina: 8.2 billion impressions, up 91% YoY
- The Farmer’s Dog: 6.8 billion impressions, up 36% YoY
The Farmer’s Dog Leads the Way with Emotional Ads and Heavy Sports Investment
In the first four months of 2023, The Farmer’s Dog was the pet food category leader in TV campaign effectiveness, meaning viewers were more likely to engage online with The Farmer’s Dog after seeing a national TV ad for the brand than any other pet food category advertiser. The brand’s high engagement rate coupled with its significant ad spend allowed The Farmer’s Dog to generate more tv-driven online engagement than any other brand in the category. That’s a massive indicator of advertising effectiveness since brands and services that maintain a more significant share of an industry’s search results have been proven to grow their market share.
The brand’s most effective ads focused on an emotional appeal centered on the idea that feeding your dog healthier food will enable them to live longer. For instance, The Farmer’s Dog’s most engaging ad focused on a beloved family pet and closed with the line, “Even if Sam lives to 20, it won’t be long enough.” This creative was 6.3 times as engaging as the average ad in the pet food category.
The Farmer’s Dog also scored big with a heavy investment in live sports advertising. The brand had the most extensive live sports presence of any advertiser in its category, with over 400 million impressions coming through live sports programming. That investment paid off big-time, as The Farmer’s Dog’s ads were more than twice as engaging when they ran during a sporting event than when they didn’t.
This sports advertising investment included a 60-second spot during the Super Bowl that told the story of one woman’s relationship with her dog through a montage that played out across key moments in the woman’s life. Spanning from childhood to parenthood, the ad closed with the message that “nothing matters more than more years together.” The Super Bowl ad had the same engagement impact as 505 typical ad units for The Farmer’s Dog.
Blue Buffalo Seeks to Leap to the Front of the Pack
Acquired by General Mills in 2018 to boost the company’s natural pet food offerings, the Blue Buffalo brand was the heaviest advertiser in the pet food category from January through April 2023. During this period, Blue Buffalo netted 12.2 billion TV ad impressions—an increase of 112% year-over-year. Despite this outlay, Blue Buffalo’s ads were 8% less engaging per person than the average pet food advertiser during this period.
Blue Buffalo’s outsized spend seems to be driven by the fact that General Mills sees high-quality pet fare as a major business opportunity, having recently come out with a new line of refrigerated pet food. This fast-growing category is expected to account for $16 billion of the market by 2027. In addition, Blue Buffalo recently rolled out a natural cat food line—less common than natural dog foods—to carve out a competitive niche in the fast-growing cat space.
Central to Blue Buffalo’s growth strategy is the humanization of pets. If people see their pets as true family members, they’ll want to feed them with the same quality ingredients they’d feed their human children.
This idea was deeply embedded in the brand’s most engaging ad of the time period we tracked, which told the story of a family that switched from Purina to Blue Buffalo after they discovered the real, whole ingredients in Blue Buffalo’s products. Following a montage of a family happily playing with a golden retriever, the narrator concludes, “Max is family, so we treat him like family.” This ad was 122% more effective than the average Blue Buffalo ad.
Meanwhile, an ad that compared family pets to wolves in the wild was more effective than the average Blue Buffalo ad but considerably less effective than the one about Max and his family. The Call of the Wild-esque ad made the case that family pets and wild wolves share a hunger for the real meat that’s available in Blue Buffalo’s products. However, the brand might have been more effective in making the case that humans, animals, and pets share a need for quality food.
Moving forward, Blue Buffalo may be able to approach the front of the pack by doubling down on its campaign to humanize pets and by matching The Farmer’s Dog’s investment in highly effective live sports advertising.
Go From Underdog to Top Dog with EDO’s Proprietary Engagement Insights
In a fast-growing market where many brands promise healthy, natural food, effective advertising will only become more important for those who hope to break through the noise and rise above the competition. And you can’t advertise effectively if you don’t know what’s working. With EDO’s Ad EnGage platform, advertisers can see the true value of their advertising and gain unique insight into what is and is not driving real consumer engagement.
Contact us today to learn how we can help you achieve greater results by optimizing your linear and digital TV buying.