Day One

Monday, May 16, 2011

8:00 Registration

9:00 Chairman’s Introduction & Opening Remarks

9:10 Rebranding Initiatives — Breathing New Life into an Old Brand

A critical key to managing a brand is to know when it’s time to take a new approach, or even start again. Reinvention of a brand requires creating a masterful blend of what the brand was intended to be, what the brand has become, and the evolution needed to maintain the brand’s effectiveness. This session will review the lifecycle of a brand and consider the opportunity to redefine a brand to support a new message, new initiative or new business objective. Discussion will include how to identify the right timing, message and meaning followed by a discussion of distribution. Recent case studies will be used to evaluate the process, timing, and steps required to reinvent a brand as well as monitor a brand lifecycle.

• Determining the objective
• Defining the message, meaning and scope
• Defining a launch strategy
• Finding the best format or blend of formats for communication
• Maintaining the momentum
• Monitoring brand lifecycle

Brand Integrity — Developing a Vision that Includes Quality & Safety

9:50 Brand Success – Building and Maintaining a Brand Based on Quality

Michelle Higdon, President of Waggin’ Train, will be presenting an insightful look at how building and using redundant quality controls as a brand platform is key to a successful brand. Michelle will cover the importance of product quality and developing progressive quality standards. One of the keys to providing consistently safe and high-quality products is building operations practices that support this structure. This presentation also will explain how innovative product development makes a brand stand out, while keeping the focus long term, rather than strictly “here and now.”

• Innovative Product Development
• Avoid being just a “Me Too”
• Thinking and developing long term strategies
• Quality Standards
• Going beyond “Good Enough”
• Building practices to support the brand quality and structure

10:20 Networking Coffee Break

Private Labeling – The Inside Story on How You Can Save Money and Expand Market Share

10:40 Private Labeling Part I: Economics and Manufacturing
Should you consider private labeling — What does it mean for your business?

• Who should consider private labeling?
• Market Stats
• Trends of private label?
• Who is currently private labeling?
• Short and long term benefits, competitive advantages, pitfalls
• What to look for in partnerships
• Valuation of private label brands, manufacturing requirements, is the extra revenue worth it?
• How can my competitors help my business by private labeling?
• OTC vs Veterinary, who owns intellectual rights?,
• What are batch size requirements and does the manufacturer have flexibility?
• Expected cash requirements for private label

11:10 Private Labeling Part II: Product, Customer and Company
Do you sell private label or not? It may not be YOUR decision.

You can make money as a private label pet product manufacturer. You can make money as a branded pet product manufacturer. But, it’s hard to make money trying to be both. If you don’t understand the three forces that ultimately decide which you should be, you’ll go broke! The new rules of branding aren’t new; they are just harder to follow in a market that has gotten larger, more fragmented, more global, more digital, and more homogenous, all at the same time. Answer a few simple questions about your product, category, company and customer to decide if you should be pursuing private label, then live profitably ever after.

Packaging — Showing Your Best Face Where it Really Matters — at the Point of Sale

11:40 Packaging — The Hidden Secret to Brand Success

Everything you do to build your brand leads up to one critical moment when the consumer is standing in front of your product (whether in-store or online) and making the final purchasing decision. Your product may be the best quality, offer the best value, or actually be the best choice for the consumer, but if the packaging doesn’t reflect that, the sale goes to the product that does. In an environment where retail shelves are crowded with options, and millions of purchasing decisions are made every second on impulse alone, packaging can make a big difference for your brand.

Key Learnings include:

• Essentials of good packaging design
• How to stand out on a crowded shelf
• Establishing an information hierarchy
• Things to look for to evaluate your current packaging

12:10 Networking Lunch

Advertising, PR, TV — The Dos, the Don'ts and Measuring Cost/Benefits

There’s nothing worse than having a spokesperson that doesn’t connect well with your key stakeholders. Today, companies have multiple audiences to reach and unlimited avenues to connect with them. Master the tools to choose and to use a credible spokesperson/s to represent your brand.

You will learn how to:

• Avoid costly or embarrassing mistakes in choosing the wrong spokesperson
• Recognize each unique connection to your audience and tailor its message and messenger
• Prevent the unexpected gaffe through preparing your spokesperson
• Use customers as powerful spokespeople

2:10 Positioning Your Product or Brand On TV – Hitting Media Home Runs

Learn how to pitch to media to place yourself above the competition. As a regular guest on CNN, Regis and Kelly, The Today Show, CBS Morning Show,
Fox News, Larry King and others, Harrison will share his inside tips on what it takes to get on these shows and what formula producers are looking for in pet segments.

Tips will include:

• How to get a producer to say yes to your idea
• What do shows really want?
• Will a show plug my product?
• Examples of successful pitch formulas

2:40 Networking Coffee Break

3:00 The Furminator Fights Back – Tips to Combat Counterfeiting

All brands are marketed in a competitive environment. But what do you do when not all of the competition is legal? How do you protect your IP, your reputation, and your customers from individuals and companies peddling cheap counterfeit products? FURminator takes strong steps to protect our brand reputation and unsuspecting consumers from imposters selling inferior products that can potentially harm pets.

Key discussion points include:

• Finding the source of counterfeit products
• The role of lawyers, customs and private investigators
• How to de-list on-line counterfeit sellers
• Communicating counterfeit warnings to consumers

Cause Marketing

3:30 Cause Marketing – Aligning with a Great Cause to Boost Your Brand

4:00 – Close of Day One

4:00-5:30 Networking Wine & Cheese Reception

Day Two

Tuesday, May 17, 2011

9:00 – Chairman’s Remarks

9:00 Chairman’s Introduction & Opening Remarks

Internet & Other Tech Tools – State of the Art Customer Acquisition Applications

9:10 Inbound Customer Generation GamePlan — Customer Acquisition Through Engagement, Education & Sharing

Achieving brand identity has traditionally been grounded in utilizing conventional outbound marketing impressions. Also called interruption marketing and push marketing, outbound marketing is the process of pushing potential customers toward your business with your message. Unfortunately, the escalating costs of mass market ad space, mailing lists, air time, printing and postage, etc, don’t produce the results expected.

Today, savvy marketers are utilizing a myriad content marketing and pull marketing strategies and tactics called, Inbound Marketing. The process for building brand identity and trust and bringing potential customers to your business, Inbound Marketing is all about engaging in conversations, offering education, and sharing.

Introduced in early 2010, the ‘Inbound Marketing GamePlan’ puts into perspective the strategic application of a myriad of internet and technology-based resources. PetBranding 2011 offers the Branding tools necessary to build and execute your own customized Inbound Marketing GamePlan for branding.

9:40 — Customer Connections Using Social Media and email Marketing That Generate Consistent and Growing Revenue Streams

This ‘new vs. old’ discussion will ground you in the tools and tactics you need to communicate with customers in a comprehensive way using social media and email marketing together to make customer connections.

10:10 A Social Media Game Plan to Build Your Brand

Is your brand among the 80% in the US that are using Social Media in 2011? Are you among the few, the proud who are leveraging social media strategically to build your brand? This session will teach you a five-step Social Media Game Plan guaranteed to help focus your efforts and deliver measurable results that will impact your business. Caution: this session will likely lead to homework after you leave the conference.

Differentiation Strategies to Stimulate Consumer Interest & Promote Loyalty

10:40 Get Your Game On(line) — Building Your Brand With Effective Online Contests & Sweeps

Which way to look? Today's consumers are bombarded with more than 5,000 marketing messages a day. (That's up 900% from the 1970s!). By creating engaging online promotions, pet suppliers and manufacturers can stimulate consumer interest, increase sales lift and stand apart from the pack. And thanks to social media sites like Twitter and Facebook, virtually anyone can design a successful online promotion...whether you're a big brand or a small mom-and-pop.

This session will explore in detail:

• Contest or sweeps – which to choose?
• How mode of entry can encourage a higher response rate
• Selecting prizes that elicit clicks
• Utilizing social media to amplify reach and impact

Customer Education – the Best Tool to Build Brand Awareness

11:10 Maximize Brand-building Educational Experiences in All Phases of Your Promotional Activities

Discover the value of educating your customers about your brand and explore the many options for providing that education. We will start internally by looking at educating your associates. Then we will stop at each point in the value chain and look for opportunities to educate the consumer and create a stronger brand experience. Specific topics include the following:

• How to align and educate internal associates on your brand
• How to manage education on multiple brands within a company
• How to educate your customer on the brand including
• Utilizing outside experts to provide additional support in a cost effective manner
• Supporting primary efforts with do it yourself tools for your retail partners – encouraging them to educate themselves on your products (giving them a toolbox)
• Leveraging your packaging and sales materials to educate customers and consumers
• How to integrate education into all promotional media including mass media, social media, events and more!
• Track and manage ROI for your customer education efforts

11:40 Close of Conference; Free time until optional, add-on workshops convene

1:00 Workshop A:

Social media is the on-line word of mouth and most important, conversations that can be monitored, tracked, traced and measured. Two thirds of the world’s internet population is now visiting a blog or social networking site, therefore driving results through social media is a critical component of your marketing and branding strategy.

An integrated marketing plan that includes social media is a fundamental necessity for branding and sustaining sales and profitability. Together, we will discuss how to master social media tools to influence purchasing decisions, attract new customers, gain market insight, and more!

Workshop attendees will explore the creation of appropriate and valuable social media content for LinkedIn, Twitter, Facebook, YouTube, and Blogs. Following an in-depth analysis of these online resources, we will discuss leveraging content, crowd sourcing, crowd conversation, etc.

• Identify the right social media sites for your product/company: LinkedIn, Facebook, Twitter, Youtube, SlideShare, etc.
• Discuss optimizing content to reach opinion leaders and influencers
• Access free tools to measure the effectiveness of social media
• Create buzz market
• Merge on line and off line conversations
• Measure customer satisfaction
• Identify dissatisfaction
• Discuss the value of advertising in support SM
• What is ‘talk-worthy’ in social media — what’s your story?

2:30 Networking Coffee Break

3:00 Workshop B:

Are you interested in learning how email marketing can help your business grow? Join us for this presentation to learn how you can create highly effective and professional emails that get results.

Email marketing is an effective, affordable and easy to use way to enhance your business’ image and communicate with your customers and prospects. Topics covered during this overview of email marketing include:

• What is permission-based email marketing
• List building
• Tips on getting your emails opened
• Best practices in email marketing
• Tracking results and what to do with this information
• And much more!!

Best for: This seminar is for anybody that wants to know the seven basic things that are necessary to successfully conduct email marketing campaigns.

4:30 Close of Workshops