Natural Balance®

Inspire worked with its premium pet food brand client Natural Balance Pet Foods, Inc. (Natural Balance) to launch a national media relations campaign to engage four-legged fur family members – not their pet owners and lovers. In a category where pets are increasingly personified and trends are often aimed at making food enticing to people and not necessarily their dogs and cats, the “Made for Pets, Not People.” marketing concept was developed and backed by thoughtful research, just like Natural Balance’s pet food. The pet food brand was curious if its focus on pet well-being could translate to its advertising. To find out, Natural Balance sought the advice of prominent animal behavior experts about what, if any, kind of advertising dogs and cats would most enjoy.

Inspire’s media relations campaign leveraged traditional tactics, including proactive pitching and targeted news release distribution to identified national consumer and trade journalists. In addition, the Inspire team executed a multimedia news release distribution via PR Newswire to maximize audience reach across the U.S. media circuit, including video ads featuring dogs and cats, as well as one of the world’s first focus groups for pets.

Also, recognizing that local television news viewership is up in the United States (135% among the 18-35 demographic and 64% of people working from home watch local news weekly), Inspire partnered with award-winning DS Simon Media on a five-hour satellite media tour (SMT), which included booking talent and production. John Sturm, chief revenue officer at Natural Balance, participated in numerous live and pre-recorded interviews with multiple national radio and television broadcast programs in targeted markets.