Television Campaign Helps Doctors Foster & Smith Become Top Dog

Since mailing its first catalog in 1983, Doctors Foster & Smith gradually has built a name for itself in the direct marketing pet-supplies business. But as of last year, the Rhinelander, Wis.-based cataloger still was searching for a way to propel itself to becoming a household name. So to boost its brand and name recognition, as well as build sales, it launched a TV advertising campaign.

The company signed on with A. Eicoff & Co., a Chicago-based direct response advertising agency specializing in TV marketing. “We wanted people to get to know who we are,” says Gordon Magee, Internet marketing and analysis manager for Doctors Foster & Smith. “We’re leaning more toward branding in this campaign.”

Magee chose Eicoff for its prior experience. Eicoff handles more than half the direct response pet supplies TV ads in the country.

The campaign is a third go-round for the cataloger and Eicoff, “We’re planning for our fourth,” Magee notes.

Eicoff initially ran the ads during syndicated broadcasts on the basic cable networks, Discovery Channel and Animal Planet. Then commercials were later run on such broadcast network programs as “Good Morning America,” “The View” and “Jack Hanna’s Animal Adventures,” the animal expert’s nationally syndicated TV series. Currently, the ads can be seen mornings on the nationally syndicated AccuWeather program that runs on digital cable outlets, including Time Warner Cable in New York, Los Angeles and Houston, and Comcast cable systems in Chicago, San Francisco and Philadelphia, among other markets.

“We had a targeted direct response market at efficient rates and targeted narrow stations [TV stations whose audiences would be interested in pet supplies] — Animal Planet, Discovery Channel, particularly pet shows on these networks,” says Eicoff Senior Vice President Richard Sangerman.

What’s more, the campaign goes after mostly women, the catalog’s primary demographic, Magee says. The spots air during morning programming, a primarily female-dominated time slot.