Go where your customers are…

I’m leafing through the Scorch October edition and I run into a Friskies ad. Now let me say up front that I know zero about pets, their needs, their likes and their owners’ buying habits. Yet I was very surprised to see Friskies in the same company as Zen, Zanzibar and Sweat Rice.

I figured the Friskies buyer would be a female skewed or male metro sexual 35 and over with discretionary income to burn. I pegged the Scorch reader a bit younger (say 25 max?) and who are more interested in putting a tattoo of a cat on their ankle than feeding one.

So I consulted with good old Google and found this from a US 2007 AC Nielsen study:

Shopper demographics and future trends

In terms of shopper demographics, younger (age 35-44) females are driving sales within the mass merchandisers, supercenters and grocery, while older females (age 55-65+) dominate the drug channel. Warehouse clubs excel among households with discretionary income to spend, followed by the grocery channel.

Cat food purchasing has increased among those shoppers 65 years and over, as cats may be easier for seniors to care for and feed. ACNielsen notes that the aging population provides opportunities that are long term. This demographic will likely impact store sizes and formats, growth of functional foods, package technology and size, and advertising copy and spending. There exists an opportunity for “generation” marketing.

So while I know we are in the United Islands of T&T and not the US, I still believe that there are not too many Scorch readers lining up to buy Friskies. So I must be missing something. Because Friskies = Purina = Nestlé = Marketing Gurus

So I have to believe that there must be a move to encourage younger people to like cats and this will mean they have to buy Friskies cat food. Like how Nestlé targeted youth with cold coffee in T&T, because only older people drank coffee. This didn’t work some years ago, so they are trying again. The Nestlé cold coffee is also advertised in Scorch. Or maybe Scorch gave them a buy one get one free and they paid for the Nestlé Iced Coffee ad.

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