Pets Industry and Social Media in Singapore

I’m so excited to be doing this post. Now why the pets industry and what has it got to do with social media? While sourcing around for materials, I stumbled upon John Grogon’s blog! Author of Marley and Me, i was practically raving about the book after i finished and was buying it for family and friends! Everyone who i knew, read it and loved it, cause it was so true and all of us could relate to it.

People who own pets ( and I’m going to be using dogs from here on cause I’m more experienced in it) have formed a community. There are a whole lot of statistics backing the pet industry but I wouldn’t dwell into it, just know that it is a growing market and for good reason. You can take a look at the forums to judge for yourself. In fact, take a look at the facebook group for local golden retrievers to see for yourself!

Amazingly, people who own dogs in Singapore aren’t all that different from people in the west. Having organized SMU Animal day and been involved in various animal welfare events, I really can’t see much difference in behavior towards our dogs. Sure, I have broken the levels of how people treat their dogs, but essentially its always the same 3 levels. Ask me more if you wanna know what i think about that.

So, we a growing industry and a growing community. So what social media? I say hell yeah, its about time Singapore’s pet industry used this!! Check out point 10 here, its a trend, and its a good one!

Big retail shops like Pet Lover’s Center could really leverage on it. With a bad reputation management, which essentially is a corporate communications problem, i believe social media is the key. Build that relationship with your consumers, hear them out, manage their comments on forums or on your corporate blog (might be a good idea to get one). We would see a different way of competing in the highly competitive retail market. Instead of price cuts, more branding efforts and relationship building with consumers would be the way to go with social media. Best of all, its low costs so the Davids can topple the Goliaths!

How about welfare groups. Action for Singapore Dogs (ASD) and SPCA could use social media to appeal to audiences much better than hammering it through traditional mediums. They have really well using social media! Just check out this video on Youtube, just that AVA hasn’t been helping out and don;t even get me started there….

Well, I was just glancing at Josh Grogon’s blog and I’m so excited to know that a movie on Marley and Me is coming out!! Like OMG!! I’m gonna check that out now.

Oh, don’t forget, May 24th, Saturday, 8.30am, 1st Singapore Animal Welfare Symposium in SMU!! I’m so proud of SMU PAW! Will blog again, its getting addictive. Till then, Remzy says good night! (See Jia Yan, I included all the things you wanted in this post while talking about social media!)