How To Become A Petfluencer

Issue #38

January 2nd, 2024

Happy New Year!!! 🥳 

Quick Hits:

🐶 The best thieves 😂

🧥 Pro tip: how to stay warm this winter

💵 Spot Pet Insurance and MrBeast Join Forces

🇮🇸 Move over Krampus, there’s a new Xmas folklore in town

🎥 Hmm… not the best angle

🏆 This dog jumps rope better than we do

• Jab, jab, cross - JAB acquires Embrace Pet Insurance for $1.5 billion.

• Oceania - Down under, Ridley Corp. has put forth an agreement to acquire Oceania Meat Processors for NZ$57 million.

• Going Dutch - Belgium-based United Petfood has acquired Dutch company De Hann Petfood.

• Stock ‘n’ load - These are 3 pet stocks $$$ worth keeping an eye on.

• Doggie Fashion - Why fashion brands want in (True Religion for your pet?).

• Companions for change - Canadian Pet Valu raised $3.5 million in donations for animal-related causes across Canada this year.

This week we interviewed entrepreneur & founder Yong-Soo Chung, who amongst other things has grown his dogs’ social media following to 150k followers across Instagram and TikTok.

Tell us about yourself:

I'm a 3x Founder and host of a podcast called First Class Founders. I love to build businesses, write on business philosophies, and am the proud owner of Humphrey and Pota (@SpottedHumphrey), two French bulldogs who have amassed over 150k followers across Instagram and TikTok.

My wife and I launched a dog boutique called SpottedByHumphrey.com in 2018 leveraging Humphrey's audience featuring treats, toys, harnesses, leashes, and more.

Whose idea was it to create an account for Humphrey and Pota? Was the growth organic or a conscious effort on your part?

Honestly, we had no idea Humphrey would become a celebrity pup. We just wanted to share our precious moments with Humphrey with others since he brought us so much laughter and joy. At first, growth was organic. But when a couple of videos went viral, we decided to make it more of a conscious effort to grow his audience especially since Instagram at the time was really pushing videos. So we were posting cute puppy videos just at the right time.

When Pota came to us a few years later, she brought a whole different side of Humphrey. We now have both huge Humphrey fans as well as die-hard Pota fans as their personalities are exact opposites. Having two Frenchies definitely made us stand out from other French bulldog owners, which made our content more entertaining and unique.

Again, we didn't get Pota just to grow our audience. We had no idea what we were getting ourselves into when we decided to get a second Frenchie. But, it just worked out!

You recently got back from a relaxing trip in Napa / Sonoma for 0$! How did you pull this off?

When your French bulldogs have over 150k followers, you get a lot of inbound requests for promotions and partnerships. For this particular trip, one of Humphrey's followers had a connection to the Fairmont in Sonoma. He connected us to the hotel's marketing team and we worked out a partnership deal where we'd stay at the hotel for free in exchange for a package of photos, blog post, and social media posts. The entire stay was complimentary including wine tastings and fancy meals at Fairmont's restaurant. All we had to do was document our journey, take a bunch of photos, and make sure our pups had an amazing time!

What is the process of collaborating with brands? From reaching out to negotiations, finalizing creative plans, and agreeing on $$

To be honest, each situation is unique. We do work with an agency that will bring us collaboration & partnership opportunities but we're not limited to just the deals that our agency brings in. If we really like a hotel, or a product, we'll find the best way to position ourselves to partner up successfully. Typically, we'll look at our other pet influencer friends to see if they've done a campaign with them before and vet them out beforehand. Afterwards, we'll usually get an intro and we'll go from there!

In terms of specifics on the deal itself, each deal is unique and it just depends on their initiatives along with our availability. (Sometimes we have exclusives on a category like treats so we won't be able to work with all brands at all times!) On all deals, we always do our best to maintain our brand integrity and our values.

Tell us about the Spotted by Humphrey shop, and the My Poopsy Daisy?

Spotted By Humphrey is our online dog boutique that my wife and I launched back in 2018. After launching my e-commerce brand (Urban EDC), we decided to deploy the same model but for the pet audience.

• Dogs kayak to safety - After flooding occurred at the animal shelter, kayaks were used to get the dogs to safety.

• Nicolas Cage has a reptile manager - We think the title really says it all.

• Dogs find $10M -Dogs found $10M worth of cocaine & meth hidden in jalapeños. Good boys!

• Cats in space - NASA just beamed a cat video from 19 million miles away.

• Cat Cartoon Art - This Thai farmer found an ingenious way to attract tourists (and cat lovers) to his farm.

• Outrage in China - In China, Vets are offering cosmetic surgery to pets to give them “Mickey Mouse ears”.

• Safe travels - Therapy dogs are the newest airport addition to help passengers with “travel stress”.

PAWS right there!!! Don’t forget to subscribe 👇👇

Love dogs, ops, and tech? Join the massive pet care industry and open a Dogdrop franchise in 2024 👇

www.dogdrop.co/franchise 

Three Business Insights from Yong-Soo Chung

You've had a few videos hit over a million views, with hundreds of thousands of likes, what does it feel like once a video goes viral and have you "cracked the formula" for what makes something "go viral" 

Definitely not! Trends in videos change just like any other content does. It's always a game of iteration, testing to see what works and what doesn't. That's the game every creator plays and it's no different for dogs than humans!

Let's say I just adopted/bought a new pet, I would love to create cute/funny content with them but I'm not social media savvy, what should I do? What are some of the first steps I should take?

I'd study the platforms carefully to see what they're trying to push. For example, when we were going viral on Instagram, Instagram was pushing heavily into video... and people were still catching up trying to figure it out on video. It was a lot easier to go viral back then on Instagram. Now, I hear TikTok is pushing for long-form content. So if I were starting from scratch, I'd try long-form videos on TikTok and see if you can build an audience on that platform quickly before jumping into other platforms. It's important to ride the macro forces of social media platforms to gain traction.

Other than collaborating with brands what are some other creative ways one can monetize their pet's social media presence?

You could start your own brand, like we did! You could also host meet-ups where you live and partner up with local organizations. I guess that's not really a monetization strategy, but we've met some amazing folks (including other creators/influencers with large audiences!) just through Humphrey's account.

Meeting up with folks in real life (and building genuine connections!) might open up new opportunities that you never knew existed.

• Primal - An industry-changing product is set to be launched in 2024 - the company says it combines the benefits of raw nutrition with the convenience of kibble.

• Under the Weather - in 2024, the company is expanding its product line.

• Recall - Blue Ridge Beef recalls due to Salmonella and Listeria

• Creepy Crawly - A Spanish pet food company is developing a strategy to address the environmental problems caused by pets.

You reached the end, you deserve a treat 🍖

Be part of the pack - For more news, links, and entertainment follow us on social media (links below) and fur - ward this to your best human friend.

If you haven’t already, consider subscribing below 👇

Finally, Why didn't the dog want to play football?

It was a Boxer.

See you next week!

The Woof is a weekly newsletter dedicated to covering the pet industry.