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Pet Brands Continue Use of Celebrities to Highlight Products

A relatively recent trend has begun where pet brands have started using celebrities and influencers to market their brands and products. These campaigns and partnerships have been activated in a multitude of ways, ranging from social media posts, to commercials, to celebrity designed pet product lines. Pet brands continue to get more creative in how they use their celebrities while maintaining their goal of reaching a target audience of pet owners.

The Market

According to the Insurance Information Institute, in 2017-2018 68% of United States households had pets. This number continues to rise, as the first year the institute conducted the research, 1988, the number of households that owned pets was only 56%. As this number continues to grow the market that pet brands are trying to reach is getting larger. Pet brands now find themselves turning to celebrity endorsements to promote their brands and product lines.

One way pet brands are reaching this large number of pet owners is through social media. According to the Pew Research Center, as of June 2019, 72% of Americans used some form of social media. Perhaps even more importantly, according to a survey conducted by I Heart Dogs 65% of pet owners post weekly about their fur babies. Combine all this together and you have a large market of pet owners looking for pet-related content. By partnering with a celebrity who frequently posts about their pet similar to the general public, pet brands can seamlessly market to the pet owners who follow the said celebrity. This type of advertising proves to be effective as the sponsored content falls in line with the regular content, creating an organic partnership. Well-known pet owner Bethenny Frankel for example, worked with Moose Toys’ Scruff-a-Luvs earlier this October.

The Opportunity

There are an abundance of opportunities in the pet industry, but the biggest two are celebrity branded pet product lines and CBD products for pets. CBD is a rapidly growing market both for humans and pets. As pet owners have found more and more uses for CBD products on themselves, they’ve started using them to treat their pets as well. This has led to CBD products being released for animals. Recently, Willie Nelson created a CBD brand for pets.

As far as celebrity branded pet product lines, there are a number of celebrities who have started their own pet brands like Ellen DeGeneres and Lisa Vadnerpump. In addition there are celebrities working with other established brands to create new products. Again, this is very prevalent in the CBD industry. Earlier this year, Martha Stewart partnered with Canopy Growth, a traditional CBD company, to start working on animal health products.

The Future

What does this all mean? The pet care industry, used to be characterized as a saturated market–no room for opportunities or growth. This is no longer the case. When you combine the popping CBD pet market with the presence of celebrities in the pet market, you have an industry that has abundant room for growth. New players are entering the pet industry daily, looking for a way to get involved. With these new developments one thing is certain, celebrities are sure to be involved in the pet related marketplace.