How Can Brands Use Pets In Visual Storytelling to Create Emotional Connections?

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Hello friend,

How are you? I hope you’re doing well kicking off 2023.

Do you find yourself walking down the street, and as soon you see someone walking by with a puppy - can’t resist the emotional surge, come over and shower the dog with love?

Advertisers - including non-pet brands - have been featuring pets as protagonists in their brand stories for a long time.

Just think of the puppy and Clydesdale “Best Buds” commercials, which aired during Super Bowls 2014 and 2015, and have been ranked as the most popular ads ever to air in the history of the NFL’s main event.

Other ads may come to your mind, like Taco Bell’s Chihuahua, Target’s Bull Terrier, Aflac’s Duck, or Gateway’s cow-spotted boxes (a company I used to work for a while ago).

First, Let’s Look At The Numbers

According to the 2023-2024 American Pet Products Association's (APPA) National Pet Owners Survey, 86.9 million, or 66% of, households in the U.S. reported owning a pet.

Furthermore, people adopted 5 million more pets in the U.S. since the pandemic broke out, with a prediction of an 8% annual growth in the pet industry by 2030 (source: Morgan Stanley).

No wonder, pets have also helped to soften the blow of social distancing.

Globally, the pet industry is about to grow to $350 billion by 2027 (source: Global Market Insights).

the What’s The Secret?

As you can imagine when you integrate a powerful “empathy trigger” like a dog or a cat into your story, users are more prone to pay attention and experience positive emotions that often cross over to the brand.

Confirming this dynamic, a study by Nichefire found that posts containing pets increased by 63% higher than the average post, while another study from NewsWhip discovered that posts with pets can generate a boost of 89% in comments and 19% in likes.

Meet The Expert

To help me unpack this exciting topic, I had the pleasure to chat with Mindy Dutka, Founder and Chief Storyteller at Dogs I Meet.

I met Mindy right here in this newsletter community, which is always a joy.

Mindy is a professional pet photographer with over 20 years of corporate experience in marketing leadership, event planning, fundraising, and sales.

At Dogs I Meet, she helps businesses and animal rescue organizations tell their stories through compelling, captivating photography.

I like her brand’s clever tag line “ Because every dog has a tale” :)

Humanizing the dog with breakfast in bed moment (Created by Mindy Dutka for pet brand, EverPub)

We talked about her career journey, why pets are effective at conveying messages, her visual storytelling process when working with brands, typical challenges, her top 3 tips for telling effective stories using pets, and much more.

Even non-pet brands, like hotels, can feature pets to stand out from the competition by emphasizing a dog-friendly facility that allows dog owners to vividly visualize their visit experience (created by Mindy Dutka for Lambert’s Cove Inn)

It’s all in the latest episode of the Visual Storytelling Today podcast.

Watch the full video recording of this interview with lots of illustrative examples:

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You can also listen to the audio recording of this episode. Subscribe to the Visual Storytelling Today podcast on iTunes, Google Podcasts, and all other podcast networks.

What do you think?

What stories have you told about pets? What was your audience response like? Feel free to share a comment.

Until next time continue exploring “new emotional bridges” to tell your stories on.

Best,

- Shlomi 

Shlomi Ron
Founder/CEO |  Visual Storytelling Institute 
shlomi@visualstorytell.com | calendar
story > visual > emotion > experience