The Farmer’s Dog Super Bowl Commercial: Aligning Corporate and Marketing Strategies
Cover Art by Eman Azrak
How to Assess the Effectiveness of a Super Bowl Commercial?
Super Bowl commercials have become the yardstick for measuring marketing and advertising excellence. Not only can these commercials gain instant massive recognition and awareness for a company's products or services, but they also linger on in the memories of consumers and become an iconic part of pop culture.
The Michigan Marketing Club at the Ross School of Business sponsored a Super Bowl and Social Media Case Competition in which Ross students formed teams, selected one Super Bowl commercial, and assessed the effectiveness of that commercial. I want to thank Tsuyoshi Kondo (MBA 2023) for inviting me to join him and JJ Preechavibul (MBA 2023), and Yoonjae Song (MBA 2023) in this competition. Our team selected The Farmer's Dog's "Forever" commercial. We were fortunate to be awarded 2nd place.
I learned from my team members the key factors to measure and assess the degree to which a TV commercial migrates to social media, increasing awareness, recognition, and emotional attachment. The Farmer's Dog's "Forever" commercial was a great success by these measures. Though beyond the scope of the mandate for this competition, a Super Bowl commercial, like any marketing, should also align with the company's strategy. But how does marketing strategy impact corporate strategy?
Can a Super Bowl Commercial Expand a Firm's Competitive Advantage?
In 1986, Bruce Henderson, the founder of BCG, offered his definition of strategy in his seminal article – "The Origin of Strategy." He explained strategy as the process of identifying a unique competitive advantage and implementing a plan of action that expands the scale and scope of its unique competitive advantage.
Each element of a firm’s marketing – including its Super Bowl commercials – should increase recognition but also expand the firm's strategic competitive advantage over its competitors. This means that business strategy and strategic marketing efforts must be aligned. Marketing is key when defining and implementing a business strategy and not an afterthought.
However, the success of most Super Bowl commercials is generally measured by the buzz it creates on social media, which typically results in short-term bounce in sales. Of course, an effective marketing campaign should increase sales. Awareness and recognition are essential, but marketing can and should do much more. It should help define and support the implementation of the firm’s corporate strategy.
The ROI and Market Share Dilemma
One of the fundamental strategic issues facing most firms is how best to balance the imperative to achieve market share with the highest possible return on investment. Simply put, a firm can pursue a dominant market share to achieve the lowest cost per unit produced, thereby increasing ROI. Alternatively, a firm can choose to differentiate its product, accept a lower market share, but leverage differentiation to command a higher retail price to make up for the higher cost of production.
The dilemma is encapsulated in the above chart that I have adapted from Professor Arnoldo Hax of MIT. The probable reality is that most firms struggle in what I call “Death Valley” or “stuck in the middle,” where they are neither the low-cost producer nor one of the higher price differentiators. Low-Cost Leaders use their lower cost per unit produced advantage to target the largest number of consumers with products offered at the lowest prices. Whereas, Differentiators use marketing to create value in the minds of a niche segment of consumers who are eager to pay a price premium for that perceived value. And this is where marketing – including a Super Bowl commercial – can play a vital role leveraging and expanding a unique competitive advantage.
When Jonathan Regev and Brett Podolsy established The Farmer’s Dog in 2014, the American consumer did not lack options when purchasing dog food. What could The Farmer’s Dog offer in terms of a brand not already offered by larger, well-established incumbent Low-Cost Leaders.
Combined, Mars Petcare, Nestle Purina Petcare, J.M. Smuckers and Hills Pet Nutrition dominate the Low-Cost Leader segment by capturing almost 50% of the total sales of the US dog food market.
Among the Differentiators, several companies began to adopt a science-based marketing approach to their products as part of a “wellness regime” for dogs. In 1997, Wellness Pet Food was established and blazed a path in the “wellness” segment of the dog food processor market, after which several newly established companies followed suit. This marketing approach has allowed them to expand into offering supplements and other non-food related products designed to improve the health of one’s dog.
The Farmer’s Dog Creating Value through Job-to-be-Done and Brand as Symbol
Unable to compete with the Low-Cost Leaders on price, The Farmer’s Dog was faced with competition with the Differentiators, some of which had already branded the value of their Wellness-related products in the minds of consumers. Regev and Podolsy had to create a unique competitive advantage that would open up a new, uncontested niche segment among the Differentiators. They did just that. I would like to use the concepts of job-to-be-done, branding, and symbols to explain how they conveyed their products’ value proposition and thrive in a niche segment with a unique competitive advantage.
The “Job to be Done” concept, pioneered by Clayton Christensen, helps explain the unique advantage The Farmer’s Dog selected to compete amongst the Differentiators. When buying a product, we “hire” it to help us do a job. Is there another job-to-be-done other than feeding your dog?
If the job-to-get-done was simply functional — feed the dog — The Farmer’s Dog’s marketing would focus on the functional aspects of their product - pricing, safety, quality, ease of use, etc. If it was – feed healthy food to the dog – it would focus on the functional aspects that are healthy. But a focus on a functional need in the mind of the consumer would do little to demarcate it from existing Differentiators that had well-established claims on functionality.
The Farmer's Dog focused on the psychological aspect of the job-to-be done when a consumer purchases dog food. They focused on addressing the consumers’ love of and a desire to extend time with one's best friend, their dog, as its unique competitive advantage. By doing this, they are able to develop an emotional engagement between their products and consumers.
All dog owners want to keep their dogs healthy as long as possible. But not everyone can afford the extra time and money to achieve this goal. Effective marketing of the brand would convince the subset of dog owners with the time and money to use their resources to purchase The Farmer's Dog products. Rather than compete directly with any of the Differentiators, they aimed to stake out a unique niche of consumers and offer them a value proposition with their brand not offered by other firms.
The Farmer’s Dog commercial was an investment in building broader consumer recognition of its brand as a symbol. It aimed to build an emotional attachment between the consumer and their brand built upon the deep affection an owner has toward their dog. Rather than building a brand based on what it could do (actually extend the life of your dog), they were building a brand on what it means, i.e., a symbol. It was a symbol of love one feels for their dog. The subtle message was, people who truly love their dog buy our products. A powerful message, creating a unique brand and a unique advantage as it competes with other Differentators.
Final Thoughts
The “Forever” commercial is not marketing dog food. It’s offering a solution that soothes the existential fear that all dog owners have.The Farmer’s Dog is branding its dog food as a solution that extends the time you will have, not with your dog, but with one of your best friends. Who would not want such a solution?
References
Hax, Arnoldo and and Nicolas Majluf, Strategic Management, Upper Saddle River NJ: Prentice Hall, 1984.
Henderson, Bruce. “The Origin of Strategy: What Business Owes Darwin and Other Reflections on Competitive Dynamics,” Harvard Business Review, Vol. 67, No. 6, 1989, pp. 139-143. https://hbr.org/1989/11/the-origin-of-strategy
Christensen, C.M. (2023) Know your customers' "Jobs to be done". Harvard Business Review. Available at: https://hbr.org/2016/09/know-your-customers-jobs-to-be-done (Accessed: March 22, 2023).
Bastos, W. and Levy, S.J. (2012), "A history of the concept of branding: practice and theory", Journal of Historical Research in Marketing, Vol. 4 No. 3, pp. 347-368. https://doi.org/10.1108/17557501211252934
