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THIS WEEK'S TOPICS:

• How this Golden Retriever makes $1M a year💰

• A full-service agency of a different breed 🐺

• Lights, camera, sit! 🎥

DOGGYDEX™

Winner 🏆: S&P 500

Proudly introducing the DoggyDex™, an index comprised of 10 publicly traded companies whose primary focus is the dog/pet industry.

The yellow line-plot in the chart represents these companies above (DoggyDex™) and their combined performance against both the S&P 500 and Bitcoin on a weekly basis.

Pawformance is measured by % gains & losses.

HOW THIS GOLDEN RETRIEVER MAKES $1M A YEAR 💰

In the digital age, influencers come in all shapes, sizes, and species.

Among them is a five-year-old Golden Retriever named Tucker Budzyn, who's not just a good boy, but also a goldmine, earning a remarkable income that surpasses more than 0.1% of the population.

How Does Tucker Make Money?

Let's break down the financials of Tucker's endeavors:

• Sponsored Posts: Tucker's main source of income is sponsored posts.

  • YouTube-paid post can be anywhere from $40,000 to $60,000 for a 30-minute pre-roll.

  • On Instagram, Tucker can make about $20,000 for three to eight stories​.

• Partnerships: Tucker has collaborated with pet-centric companies like BarkBox and King Kanine, further bolstering his income and popularity.

• Merchandise: Tucker also models dog accessories, which are then sold to his millions of fans.

Courtney, Tucker’s mom, estimates that Tucker rakes in over a million dollars a year, a staggering sum for a four-legged influencer.

The Journey to Fame

Tucker's journey to stardom began when he was just eight weeks old. Courtney started filming him and was amazed at how many people were interested in the little golden furball.

By the time Tucker was six months old, he already had a following of 60,000 on Instagram.

It's been a rapid climb to fame since then, with Tucker now boasting over 3.4 million followers.

A FULL-SERVICE AGENCY OF A DIFFERENT BREED 🐺

We've all experienced marketing for the dog industry.

Ads for GPS collars, colorful dog toy packaging, jingles for dog food brands, and more.

But have you ever thought about who’s the brains of these outfits?

In the pet industry, like most industries, companies will often hire 3rd party agencies to help them with a wide variety of marketing tasks.

Everything from picking a name, deciding on the colors to use, identifying the target audience, pricing, creating ads, and more.

These agencies are specialists, and can often provide skills and resources that companies aren't able to have in-house.

To learn more, we contacted Bigeye Agency a marketing shop that has a strong pet specialty, and has worked with brands like Zesty Paws, Purina, Moe's, and more.

Bigeye employs around 40 staff and is a full service agency, meaning they can handle almost any marketing task a brand throws their way.

Their clients are typically larger corporations looking to reduce the risk of their investment in developing a new product or service, by working with an experienced agency team that provides complete service.

Projects can range from 8 weeks up to 9 months or more, and Bigeye can be compensated in a variety of different ways, such as a flat rate for the project or an equity share agreement based on the success of the project.

Our inside man at Bigeye was Adrian Tennant, their Chief Strategy Officer, and industry veteran who has done it all from running his own company, to working at top tier companies like Disney.

Adrian has been with Bigeye for 5 years and we couldn't have done this piece without his wonderful insights!

We sat down with Adrian and picked his brain on a variety of topics to understand more about the world of pet marketing.

What does a typical project look like for Bigeye?

From a high level a project may go through a few different stages:

1. Discovery 🔎 - first Bigeye wants to really understand the clients business, the product they are promoting, their goals, and all of their ideas. Everything flows from this meeting, as it sets the stage for how the agency will plan the direction of the campaign. They want to understand questions like whether they will need to run their own research, or who is the target customer.

2. Strategic briefing📝 - taking all the things they learn in discovery and their plans and putting it on paper to share with the customer. This includes things like a SWOT analysis (what are the strengths weaknesses opportunities and threats) for the product.

3. Creative 🖍️ - The fun part, this is where the ads, logos, colors, videos, and more get created.

4. Distribution 🪃 - Figuring out where and through which channels they should be using the creative.

5. Continuous analysis 👩‍💻- Adrian made it clear that they are very iterative, meaning that when they launch a project, they are always looking to make changes based on the feedback or data they receive.

Interesting trends from the pet industry

Being a full service agency, Bigeye does a lot of research on behalf of their clients and have their paws on the pulse of what is going on in the industry.

A few interesting nuggets from Adrian:

• This may not be as much of a surprise, but Bigeye has seen a trend toward owners defining their pets as a member of the family, not "like" a member of the family. This trend has really accelerated in the last 4 years, and in their most recent survey of 1,000 owners, a ridiculous 97% of owners feel this way.

• It is very difficult now to find a product category for humans that doesn't have a pet equivalent (huge opportunity 🤑 if you can find a good one!)

• There are rapid advancements and focus on pet health, especially in wearables and medication. Adrian gave an example of a company looking to license FDA approved pharmaceuticals for humans to investigate how they could be used on pets.

• Some other interesting stats are that 53% of owners believe their pet understands most of what they say, and that 72% have gotten their pet directly from friends or family versus purchasing or rescuing.

If your interested, you can get a free download of their most recent pet owners study here 👉 LINK

What has been the most fun project to work on?

Adrian had polled his team on their favorite project to work on, and the consensus was Moe's Healthy Pets.

The team felt like with Moe's they had the most creative liberty to come up with fun and unique campaign ideas, and that the company was very open to to leaning on their expertise and ideas.

Most importantly, are dogs in the office!?

Oh definitely. The majority of employees own pets and the office is pet friendly. Sign us up!

It was so great to get a deeper insight into the pet marketing space, and big thanks to Adrian for helping pull back the curtain.

If you want to hear more, they also have a podcast episode diving deeper into their 2023 pet owner study.

LIGHTS, CAMERA, SIT! 🎥

There are plenty of famous dog actors out there. You've got Lassie, Air Bud, Hooch (from Turner and Hooch), the poor dog from John Wick, and many more.

As an owner you might wonder if your dog has the chops to make it to the big stage. I mean, everyone knows their pup is the cutest in the world and a born star, right?

How does one get their dog into show business?

You've got to make sure your dog passes some of the basic qualifications, and then gets noticed by a casting director:

• While being adorable seems like the most important thing, it's really training. At a minimum your dog needs to be trained well enough to consistently sit, lay down, stay, speak, and hit a "mark". When filming, you likely won't be able to give voice commands, so hand signals are a must. Also, is your pooch easily distracted? Probably not going to fly as there will be loud noises, crew, equipment, lights, etc

• Yes, looks are important. Directors are often looking for healthy, expressive dogs, depending on the nature of the work.

• Casting directors are the true gatekeepers here. While some dogs get "discovered" or are represented by a talent agency, the majority need to impress casting directors during either casting calls or auditions:

  • Casting calls are open sessions held when a casting director is looking for an actor for a role. This is probably the best chance for most dogs to get picked. There are many websites and social media profiles that list available casting calls in your area.

  • Auditions are a little trickier, in that many are invite only. Most major TV and movie roles are cast this way. The auditions typically require the "actor" to perform the same scene or task multiple times to ensure they have the training required.

• To help this whole process, a good collection of photos and a resume of skills and experience can help you get them noticed

How much does it pay?

The pay is meh 🫤.

While the top of the acting heap can be quite lucrative (Rin Tin Tin made about 8x what his human co-stars did), the standard day rate for a dog is $400.

While that seems pretty good, keep in mind all the training, travel, casting calls, etc that it takes to get that day.

Consistent dog actors can make between $5k - $10k per year, but there are very few of those.

Our opinion is that unless your dog really seems to enjoy performing, it's probably not worth it from a financial standpoint.

Having said that, don't let us dissuade you from your dreams!

KIBBLE BITS:

Every week we love to shoutout a pooch that has made another trip around the sun. Happy Birthday 🎂 to Doug The Pug, who’s now the big 1-1!

That's all there is to bark about this week.

If you want more, be sure to follow our Twitter (@dogonomist).