Research Outline

Media and Marketing of Major Dog Shows

Goals

To gain an audit of the AKC National Championship, Westminster and National Dog Shows for media coverage, social conversations and brand activations at the shows.

Early Findings

AKC NATIONAL CHAMPIONSHIP

  • The AKC National Championship's main sponsor is Royal Canin, whose branding appears on all official material associated with the event.
  • Other official sponsors include TropiClean and SpectrumBrands.
  • A complete list of the 2018 vendors at the show is available here. However, the list does not clarify if any did any brand activations as such.
  • We then examined images and social media pictures shared by attendees to see if there was any evidence of brand activations or experiential marketing at the event. None were found.

WESTMINSTER DOG SHOW

  • The key sponsor for the Westminster Dog Show is Purina ProPlan.
  • Other official sponsors are Cosequin, Embark, LifeProof, Merck Animal Health and Trupanion.
  • A complete list of vendors is here. None of the booth descriptions imply they were 'brand activations'.
  • We also checked images shared on social media and the internet of the event for any sponsor or brand that looked like it was conducting a brand activation. None were found.
  • WKC partnered with GLOW to help grow its social media audience in 2018 for the annual dog show. It grew social following by over 15,000 and helped expand engagement rates, millennial audience reach and hashtags mentions.
  • One of their main initiatives was the #BestAtHomeContest to crown a winner from public submissions of their dogs.

NATIONAL DOG SHOW

  • Purina is also the key sponsor for the National Dog Show.
  • Another key sponsor is Carson Events (who coordinates the TV broadcast with NBC).
  • A vendor list is available here. Similar to above, there is nothing to indicate any of these vendors conducted any brand activations.
  • Similar to the other two shows, images and social media pictures did not yield any evidence of brand activations during the event.

  • In addition to this public search, we scanned our proprietary research database of over 1 million sources and were unable to find any specific research reports that address your goals.