Purina Pet Food Brand and Its Sub-Brands Marketing Paper

This study offers a marketing insight on the most contemporary branding techniques used to promote target products. This research does the promotion of a subsidiary brand name, particularly Pet Food for Elders. The original brand name is Purina Pet Food. The target customers of the old and new products are families that take care of their dogs and cats. The target customers seek for the best possible meals to feed their pets in the best possible way. They think about the actual needs of animals that live at home and want others to take care of them.

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Nestlé Purina PetCare

Nestle Purina Pet Care is a brand known across the globe. It focuses on producing and marketing food for dogs and cats, and recently, it introduced a new product aimed at improving the diet of elder pets. The research covers brand inventory, including brand elements that have a substantial impact on the brand formation and customer recognition. The research also reveals the distribution strategy while promoting the chosen product line of pet food. It refers to the ability of the Nestle Company to compete in the target industry in terms of knowledge, organization structure, and product segmentation criteria. The company gives particular attention to the promotion approach of the new brand name, Pet Food for Elders, a sub-brand of Purina Pet Food. It addresses both online and offline channels of marketing the product line while building new brand equity.

Current Brand Inventory

Brand Elements

It is important to classify and define the most significant elements of every brand. The purpose of every brand element is to contribute its value to the meaning of a brand name. It refers to all possible information about brand building and customer recognition. A strong brand name reflects brand distinction, including the domination of the Nestle Company in the target market. However, a proper positioning strategy that refers to the size of the company and its benefits enables promotion of a particular product or service.

The most common brand elements are as follows (Budelman, Kim, & Wozniak, 2010):

• Name: It is a combination of words that helps people to distinguish a particular company as well as the products and services it offers based on a defined business concept;
• Logo: It is a visual representation of an enterprise that helps people to associate it with the brand name of the company;
• Tagline: It is a catchphrase that allows the target customers to recognize the brand name with some famous words;
• Graphics: It is essential to apply explicit visual depiction of a particular company based on the selected trademark of the promoted brand name;
• Shapes: It is the way the products look like while considering the trademark elements of a particular brand;
• Colors: It is important to make a brand name unique with different colors that will make the brand different from the others;
• Sounds: It is a ton of notes that symbolize a brand which is usually positioned in the introduction of a particular brand;
• Scents: It is vital to have a new scent so that a branded trademark could differentiate in the target market;
• Tastes: It is important to offer new tastes to the target customers while promoting certain copies that will represent a particular brand name;
• Movements: It is the way products move while serving a trademark to the target customers (Budelman et al., 2010).

A Product Line for the Sub-Brand Pet Food for Elders and Its Value in the Target Market

The product line for the selected brand name is a family brand that represents multiple products of pet food for elders with different tastes. The product is unique since it is more delicate for elder pets to help them live a longer life. It has more ingredients that are necessary for pets’ health. The product also has many vitamins to provide elderly pets with nutrients they lack due to their age. Based on the SWOT analysis of the Purina Pet Food, it is possible to conclude that the pet food brand has a significant positive impact on the company revenue. It contributes to the assets of the Nestle Company based on a number of sub-brands the company positions (Nestle, 2016).

The Value of the Brand Product Line Compared to its Competitors

The Pet Food for Elders would be one of the new sub-brands that the Nestle Company could position in the target market. The company has already found its target clients and could proudly add one more product that would create more value to the business benefits. The promotion of this sub-brand could help the company to benefit from its sales in a different segment of the target market, which comprises target clients with old pets. It is important to acknowledge that every new sub-brand positioned by the company costs more than its previous sub-brand. For this reason, advertising of a new sub-brand will add more profit to the enterprise (Ellwood, 2014).
Such market penetration strategy is likely to have a positive impact on the growth of the Purina brand name all over the world. It is noteworthy for the Nestle Company since it could help to add more value to its target customers, which will ultimately lead to a bigger return on investment for the enterprise. Such situation occurs whenever a company offers another family brand name, such as a product line for a different type of dogs. Such meals for pets have a lot of protein and supplements needed for pets’ health and longevity. Besides, it is possible to cooperate with the Purina brand accessories that are popular today. The target customers could be interested in purchasing many of such accessories for their older pets along with the Pet Food for Elders (Kotler, Kartajaya, & Setiawan, 2010).
Overall, the Pet Food for Elders brand has many advantages compared to its competitors. It includes unique features that hardly any other competing brands have altogether, especially those concerning the most elderly population of pets. It contains additional nutrients for older pets that help their families to establish a favorable diet. It supports the immune system of elder pets, thus helping them to be healthier. It also helps pets to keep their skin stronger and improve the digestive system of domestic animals. Pet Food for Elders contains merely ingredients consumed by people. It means that all older pets consume all the necessary minerals and vitamins required for their health (Richey & Ponte, 2011).
All the ingredients of Pet Food for Elders are natural, which infers they do not contain any artificial elements. Therefore, a combination of such elements makes the sub-brand sustainable to enter the target market, with many unique features that could surpass the competing pet food companies. Such approach to the promotion of the new product line represents the sub-brand structure that offers new market segmentation. Such criteria could help the Nestle Company to support its additional products in the target industry (Arthur, 2013).

Evaluation and Analysis of the Promotion and Distribution Strategies

The Nestle Company takes advantage of an intensive distribution strategy with every its product line of a sub-brand. It is important since both selective and exclusive approaches to promote the target product prove ineffective. It means that the company should use all the available resources to penetrate a new target market. The idea is to reach the shelves of every pet owner all over the world. The company positions its sub-brand line all over its existing sub-brand. A new product line comes as an additional offer made specifically for elder pets of the target customers (Temporal, 2010). It is important to consider a specific approach to marketing the sub-brand while aiming to create, build, and maintain brand equity in the target industry.
One of the beneficial ways to promote sub-brand equity of the company is through the Purina Event shows and competitions. The idea is to attract the target audience, including all the Nestlé Purina Pet Care sponsors of different charitable promotion campaigns. Such activities are also necessary to promote the sub-brand at the annual Pet Care Pride Day. The Nestle Company inspires its employees to bring their pets to work. The purpose of such approach of Nestle is to minimize employee turnover. As a result, the company retains highly qualified personnel capable of maintaining all the daily operations (Greenberg & Kates, 2013).
The other significant way of promoting equity of the sub-brand product line is through supermarkets and drug stores, including pet stores. At the same time, the Nestle Company gains considerable benefits from promoting the sub-brand products through online marketing and advertising channels. The company takes advantage of email marketing, including the use of applications to distribute information about pet feeding. It also refers to the use of sponsored media advertising. The idea is to promote the need for both cats and dogs to eat healthy meat that Pet Food for Elders contains (Lee & Kotler, 2011).
Another way of marketing new brand product line equity is Facebook advertising. In this case, the Nestle Company takes advantage of its brand name by encouraging target customers to play the game Purina Pet Resort. The players of this game get used to Pet Food for Elders, which makes them purchase such pet food as they see it in supermarkets, pet stores, and in the Internet. In fact, such virtual games are available on Facebook, which makes this social network one of the most contributing ones to the growth of Nestle business worldwide (Zoratti & Gallagher, 2012).
One of alternative ways to promote sub-brand equity is by becoming a sponsor of many Pet Shows and Pet Clubs globally. It also refers to the benefits of competitions for pet owners who are interested in traveling and sharing their pet experience with other pet owners. Such kind of traveling is available with the Nestle Purina Contest, which offers a part-time job of interviewing pet owners all over the globe. It is vital to point out that pets travel as well regardless of the circumstances. Additionally, such program also helps pet owners to lose weight with a Purina traveling program. The idea is that pet owners film videos with their cats and dogs and share them on the Internet. Such actions of pet owners promote the interest of the target audience to take part in the competition for the greatest dog and cat in the community (Kotler, Hessekiel, & Lee, 2012).
Personal selling is another alternative for the company to distribute Pet Food for Elders in the target market. This approach works since the trust of people has a powerful positive impact on the promotion of sub-brands of the company. Personal recommendations have a great impact on people, especially the target buyers of pet meals. Pet owners are greatly interested in providing their cats and dogs merely with high-quality pet food all the time. Such promotion and advertising technique has a strong effect on target clients, which results in the positive word of mouth across the target markets (Zhang, Wang, & Xia, 2010).
The final elements of the promotion and distribution strategy of sub-brand equity are various contexts, discounts, and coupons that allow the target customers to purchase sub-brand product lines in high volumes. It makes sense to consider that the quality of all product lines of the Nestle Company is of the highest possible quality. Thus, it means that after the target customers try a sub-brand product, such as Pet Food for Elders, they will never use a different one produced by Nestle competitors. In such cases, the sales promotion mechanism works and attracts a significant number of the target customers to the sub-brands of the company. The use of coupons, rebates, games, and contests enhance the massive promotion and distribution approach of the Nestle Company (Nestle, 2016).
The pricing strategy of the company is designed to make sub-brand equity available to a vast majority of the target customers. It includes both average and premium pricing policies that help the company to distribute its sub-brands in high volumes. In fact, a high quality of the Purina product lines puts the company in the position to use prestige pricing for its branded products. It also reflects the value pricing of the product lines and their penetration capacity in the target markets (Kotler & Pfoertsch, 2010).
The benefit of the Purina brand is that it facilitates promotion of sub-brands of the company with minimum efforts. However, the company still invests in paid advertising for a vast majority of its target product lines. It is important to understand that a thorough pricing strategy could play a vital role the proper distribution of any product line. The idea is to perceive the price range and make the product line available for all the categories of pet owners (Krüger & Stumpf, 2013).
All these efforts of the company help it to position the sub-brand line across its multiple distribution channels globally. Such actions encourage the target audience to try the sub-brand based on the high quality of its previous family brands in the already established target market. In fact, Purina pet products are rather profitable for the Nestle Company and its manufacturing business. Besides, Purina holds more than twenty percent of the target market, which is one of the largest market chains all over the world. It is also vital to emphasize the fact of using eco-friendly materials in packaging of the sub-brand product lines, which adds value to the Nestle Company and its brand reputation (Tybout & Calder, 2010).

Market Development

Segmentation of the Existing Target Product Market and Identification of a New One

The segmentation approach is rather simple. According to this approach, the Purina product lines are already well-established in the target market. The difference is that the positioning of a new sub-brand, such as Pet Food for Elders should address end customers with elderly pets. In this case, it is important to differentiate the product appearance. In other words, it makes sense to take advantage of a new branding strategy based on popular brand elements (Scott, 2013).

Refer below for the identification of every brand elements applied to Pet Food for Elders (Khan, 2013):

• Name: The name of the product brand line is already changed from Pet Food to Pet Food for Elders.
• Logo: The same changes apply to the logo of the sub-brand of the company. It should have additional words “for Elders” written in italics to make the difference visible for the target customers.
• Tagline: The same change occurs in the tagline. It is important to promote Pet Food for the particular age group of pets, particularly the old ones. It should be visible in the tagline.
• Graphics: The graphical elements of Pet Food for Elders should have dogs and cats of an older age to maintain its brand name.
• Colors: It is possible to make brand name colors somewhat different from the original ones. The idea is to focus attention of the target customers and persuade them to purchase the new brand product line for their older pets.
• Sounds: The advertising of the sub-brand should also have an appropriate voice of domestic animals. It will symbolize the sub-brand differently and make the target customers aware of the different positioning of a particular brand;
  Scents: The sub-brand product line could also have some more flavors to attract both dogs and cats to consume the pet food.
  Tastes: The same refers to the taste of the sub-brand. It is better to add several more tastes so that the target customers could try them all and then select the best one for their pets depending on their pets’ preferences (Khan, 2013).

The rationale for making such changes is to consider a better promotion and distribution strategy of the sub-brand product line. New brand architecture will help to make the product more recognizable by the target customers. It will also help the company to make a proper positioning of the sub-brand in a new segment of the target market. In particular, the Nestle Company will position Pet Food for Elders with triggers that make customers purchase new sub-brands. Such approach of the company adds value to every brand (Light et al., 2012).

The Marketing Program Changes Towards the New Target Segment of the Market

The objective for this decision is to reconsider the ways of distributing and promoting the new sub-brand along with the old ones. The marketing approach to Pet Food for Elders should be somewhat different. In other words, it is important to establish new brand awareness for a particular sub-brand of the well-known product line of Purina pet food. Since it is a new sub-brand, it makes sense to increase the price by ten percent. However, to make the target customers consider purchasing it on a regular basis, the product packaging should be different to reflect different prices. Otherwise, the difference in prices will not be visible. At the same time, the new sub-brand will be available for a vast majority of the target customers (Weinreich, 2010).
The distribution and promotion strategy should apply a similar approach. However, it also makes sense to add more value to the new product line. In particular, to the company should inform the target customers about any additional benefits of Pet Food for Elders compared to the rest of food products for pets created by Purina. These benefits should be reflected all over the website, including the retail stores, online catalogs, social media advertising, and partnership deals. Simultaneously, the product strategy promotion should reflect the altered packaging of the sub-brand product line, including all the brand elements discussed previously (Ryan, 2014).
The promotion strategy should also take advantage of the real promotion campaigns, such as “online and offline advertising, social media and affiliate marketing, local newspapers, and magazines.” The difference in such promotion and distribution strategies is that the Nestle Company should provide its target customers with more information about the benefits of a newly established sub-brand. It could be achieved by spreading and sharing blog posts and articles on the value of Pet Food for Elders on the Internet. The same refers to the use of direct marketing (Millman, 2012).
The company could take advantage of articles and blog posts and put some of them in the Internet newsletters, direct mails, and catalogs all over the target markets. Additional sales promotion should also take place in the form of “online contests, various promotions, and events sponsorships.” The idea is to create a community based on the target brand Purina Pet Food and its sub-brands, such as Pet Food for Elders. Such messages should be spread on the Internet using “email marketing, content marketing, social media marketing, and search engine optimization.” The key channels of interest should be Facebook, YouTube, Instagram, and Twitter (Scott, 2011).
Conclusion
The study reveals the most appropriate marketing tactics that could help to deliver Pet Food for Elders to the homes of the target customers. At the same time, the research covers marketing program changes that could help the brand owners to make challenging decisions while promoting the discussed product. It also correlates with the pricing policies, promotion considerations, and additional services.
Distribution of the sub-brand plays a crucial role in establishing, developing, and maintaining brand equity. The existing distribution and promotion strategy of the company takes advantage of all the available media advertising platforms. The Nestle Company benefits from the use of social media channels to attract the target audience. It refers to the benefits of broad media advertising of the Purina sub-brands. The same relates to the promotion and distribution of Pet Food for Elders. Direct marketing is another option for the company to distribute their message to their target customers. The idea is to attract the target audience directly to the promotional campaigns.

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