Pet marketers most often focus on driving a competitive stake in the sand with their brand and business advantages, nutritional benefits, ingredients and perhaps also superiority claims. However, this almost always feeds brand communication chocked full of logic-prone, data leaning arguments about why the product is the right choice.
Some of it may be relatively straightforward (good) while other messaging is more complex (bad). That means there will be simple to understand narratives and others that are dense and detailed. In sum, more reasons, more arguments, more rationale is almost always the well-worn path to brand outreach.
But what if this approach lacks an embedded understanding of the human involved and how people process information and make decisions in an environment where burning mental calories is routinely avoided. Said another way what if the standard methods of outreach inadvertently conflict with what we know about how people behave. Detailed, lengthy fact-driven arguments can get in the way of successful influence on favorable decisions — which is precisely what everyone ultimately strives for.
Too much complexity in pet
On occasion the back panel of a pet food kibble package can be eerily similar to a fertilizer bag, packed with copy and information covering the waterfront of formulation, ingredient panels, nutrition claims, proportions, benefit messaging, instructions, and other details. Brands commonly employ every square inch to convey data, perhaps hoping the audience for whom its intended will absorb every syllable. Nope. Won’t happen. Lawyers are the only ones parsing every word.
If anything, the steady diet of detailed data can actually produce an adverse effect. We forget about the human being involved and how people behave in the face of information overload. Here we will explore the human side of your audience and offer guidance on how to make your brand communication more effective by being respectful of how people think, make choices, translated into what constitutes effectiveness.
Making tangible what is often intangible
When you buy a nail at the hardware store you may learn about its length, the metal used to forge it and the recommended application (cement, metal, wood). Very specific, very clear. Pet food on the other hand contains an array of intangibles brands want the consumer to believe about the quality of ingredients, the nutrition that will be delivered and especially the impact it will have on the health and wellbeing of a pet.
However, humans crave the tangible and in the face of intangible “assertions” we automatically, subconsciously scan for tangible signals. This is where your packaging can play an incredibly important role that far exceeds the hopeful impact of all that dense panel copy. Colors (warm), materials (top quality), images (humanized), typeface (bold easy to read), and powerful, simple headlines represent signals the brain will quickly process. It can be designed with intention to convey what you want people to believe about the quality of the food you make. If your package looks like an exceptionally high-quality vessel and builds on an emotional quotient in the creative use of visuals that activate memories of the pet-to-human bond, it can imply volumes about what’s inside – and you didn’t have to say more than a few words.
Symbols, flags and markers
People are no longer buying products. They are purchasing symbols, flags that represent who they are, how they see themselves and especially what they want the world around them to believe they care about. For example, a Mercedes logo immediately telegraphs as high-quality German engineering and maybe luxury. The symbol is also a statement about the customer as a badge of success, intelligence, position and status. The strategic use of symbolism and flags of quality can telegraph impressions that require little explanation to translate meaning.
How this works in pet:
- Sustainability – oddly enough studies confirm that your commitment to sustainable practices isn’t just about lowering emissions, consumers also infer higher quality standards on the pet food itself and believe that the commitment to the former is also impacting integrity and quality on the latter. Show it, don’t bury it.
- Third party verification – want consumers to believe you, then employ the statements of credible experts and sources to validate your products. This can also be accomplished through certification providers and strategic application of their logos.
- Ingredient quality – sorry but graphics of T-bone steaks are a tough sell on believability. However, if you use fresh proteins (a flag) in your formulation, you can show those ingredients in a form that telegraphs their quality in a more realistic, credible setting (bowl or cutting board).
- Healthy impact – On your back panel, a large image of a dog or cat with callouts showing where the functional benefits of your ingredients provide healthful benefits to the animal for skin/coat, heart, weight and gut. Keep it simple. No dissertations on how it works.
Or a real life a story of a pet whose life was transformed by your products, told in the voice of the pet parent who is eternally grateful. Honest, sincere and celebratory.
Avoiding cognitive overload
Words and their meaning matter and pictures can tell a thousand words. Long explanations are counterproductive. Keep it short. Simple. Headline style statements that address the markers of quality in pet food. Including the protein-ification of everything in pet diets. Micro-biome advances. Functional benefits. Minimal processing. Ingredient integrity. Science backed. Use symbols and graphics to make point quickly, visually.
Density is an issue in today’s hyper attention span challenged world. Get the point across without trying to tax the brain of your audience.
Emotion drives action
This may be the most difficult concept to grasp of all, and that’s the neuroscience on how people make decisions to act. Nearly everyone believes that humans are fact-based, rational decision-making machines. We are anything but that. It is how we feel in the presence of your brand that wins the decision. People are emotional creatures who think, not thinking creatures who feel.
It is emotion that impacts decisions to act. Pet is one of the strongest emotion-driven categories on earth, yet this is too often left in the dust in favor of fact-based outreach. When you celebrate and embrace the unique, tangible bond between people and their pets, you trigger feelings. It is this moment of emotion in a positive and endearing setting where you break through all the resistance and worry about risks to win a purchase. Decisions to act come from an emotional base. Always, all the time.
Your product facts and details come in to play post purchase as the rationale people draw on to confirm why they made a good decision.
So let people enjoy the bond, the moment, the love they feel for their pet. Heap that upon them in your brand communication. Don’t worry about all those details you think you need to push. There will be a place and time for that, but the moment of convincing is better secured through emotive storytelling than any other pathway.
It’s perceptions that drive the reality of successful pet food marketing. You are in the perception management business. Now get to it.
Robert Wheatley is CEO of Chicago-based Emergent, a brand communications firm focused on state-of-the-art PR, retail marketing, Agentic Engine Optimization (AEO), content creation, social media and business strategy. Emergent is steeped in leading edge pet brand business building experience with a deep track record in advancing business results in premium pet brand categories. Robert is a voice for pet care industry innovation, trends and marketing best practices.
