September 13, 2007
Dogs in advertising: Pets and Branding
What a pleasant surprise to be tagged by Mihaela Lica’s Online Public Relations blog back in July! I’m sure I’m supposed to have realized this through some automagical trackback or technorati technology, but since I’m a blog newbie (though have been hand-tooling web sites professionally since my first in 1996!), I had no idea until checking my stats now! Thank you, Mihaela, for the kind words:
Sue – at least to give you a link to her amazing site, where she displays the most beautiful pet portraits I’ve ever seen.
So, a month after her August 14 deadline for comments, I respond to Mihaela’s request for instances of pets being used in branding a non-pet business, here are a few I can think of:
- The most famous I can think of is the RCA Victor “His Master’s Voice” logo with a terrier mix named Nipper listening to an old Victrola.
- A more recent one is the Yellow Labrador Retriever pup mascot used in Cottonelle toilet paper ads and packaging here in the US. You can see their web site has a whole section called “Puppy Stuff.”
- The Mack Truck logo features a burly Bulldog. They even publish Bulldog® Magazine
There must be others, but those came to me right away.
This is a great topic — it would be interesting to see if this has changed over time, too. A good topic for someone’s graduate school thesis!
How about those Clydesdale horses for the Budweiser Brewing Company? They projected that strong, muscular, macho male image the company was targeting for so many years. Budweiser also featured Spud in more recent years.
And those adorable geckos for Geico Insurance that has been running recently? They almost make me feel warm towards insurance companies. ;o)
Comment by yvonne — September 15, 2007 @ 10:15 am