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AvoDerm Bets on Bold Creative to Break Through Natural Pet Food
AvoDerm Natural's 'Pet People Get It' is a 2017 multi-channel advertising campaign created by Smith Brothers Agency for the avocado-based pet food brand, marking AvoDerm's first national advertising effort in the United States and deploying surreal film-led creative to distinguish the brand from conventional pet food advertising.
AvoDerm Natural is owned by Central Garden and Pet Company, headquartered in Walnut Creek, California. The brand offers a broad portfolio of dog food and cat food products formulated with avocados, with healthy skin and coat promoted as the core benefit. For a brand that had built its reputation in natural retail channels without national above-the-line support, the 2017 campaign represented a genuine strategic inflection point rather than an incremental media buy.
Smith Brothers Agency, the Pittsburgh-based independent, developed the campaign around a single arresting creative idea: humans depicted with dog or cat heads eating pet food in the manner that people would eat their own meals. The conceit is built on the insight that pet owners — people who self-identify as 'pet people' — are emotionally and intellectually invested in what their animals eat in ways that conventional pet food advertising consistently underestimates. The campaign launched in March 2017 across the United States and is catalogued in the Clapboard creative archive with one film asset documented. No additional channel breakdown has been publicly disclosed, though the campaign was described as multi-channel at launch. AvoDerm Natural receives a Clapboard Score of 54 out of 100 for this campaign, reflecting competent challenger-brand positioning within a category that rewards creative distinctiveness.
AvoDerm Natural entered national advertising at a moment when the United States natural pet food segment was drawing intensified competitive attention. The global pet food market was estimated at approximately US $75 billion in retail sales in 2017, according to petfoodindustry.com, with the United States representing one of the most developed and contested national markets within that figure. The natural and premium sub-segment was expanding at a pace that attracted both specialist brands and mass-market incumbents seeking to premiumise their portfolios.
In the United States, AvoDerm Natural occupied a niche defined by its avocado ingredient story at a time when consumer interest in functional, ingredient-led pet nutrition was accelerating. The brand's competitive landscape in natural pet food included established players such as Blue Buffalo, which had already built significant national brand equity through sustained television and digital investment, and Merrick Pet Care, another ingredient-transparency-led challenger. Against these competitors, AvoDerm Natural's avocado-based differentiation was scientifically specific but creatively underleveraged before 2017.
Michael Bollinger, President of Smith Brothers Agency, articulated the strategic stakes directly, as reported by MediaPost on March 14, 2017: 'As a challenger brand, Avoderm knew that if their advertising went unnoticed, everything else would be academic.' That statement frames the campaign's strategic logic precisely. For a brand without the media weight of category leaders, creative distinctiveness was not an aesthetic preference but an economic necessity. The decision to use anthropomorphised animal-headed humans rather than conventional lifestyle footage of pets and owners was therefore a calculated challenger move designed to generate attention in a category where visual convention had become a barrier to recall.
The creative execution for 'Pet People Get It' centres on a single sustained visual idea. Humans with realistic dog or cat heads are shown eating AvoDerm Natural pet food in domestic situations that mirror human dining behaviour, treating the food with the same consideration and appetite that a person would apply to their own meal. The approach deliberately avoids the category's default visual vocabulary — scenic outdoor shots of energetic dogs, slow-motion pours of kibble, and veterinarian endorsement formats — in favour of something that generates immediate cognitive disruption.
Craig Seder served as Executive Creative Director on the campaign, with Bronson Smith and Lindsey Smith as Chief Creative Officers at Smith Brothers Agency, as documented in campaign production records cited by Clapboard. Senior Art Director Jon Nicholson and Senior Copywriter Rob Doerzbacher led the craft execution at the creative team level, with Executive Producer Matt Haratin overseeing production. Account Director Amanda Gribble managed the brand relationship, and Associate Director of Paid Media and Analytics Alex Davis guided the media dimension of the multi-channel programme.
The choice to anchor the campaign in film is strategically coherent for the concept. The human-with-animal-head device requires motion and performance to land its humour and its argument simultaneously. A static image risks reading as mere visual novelty; the film format allows the scenario to develop long enough for the audience to register that the behaviour on screen mirrors their own relationship with food quality and sourcing. The campaign carries one film asset in the Clapboard archive, suggesting a concentrated creative bet on a single piece of hero content rather than a fragmented multi-asset approach. For a challenger brand operating with constrained media budgets, that concentration of creative resource into one strong execution is a structurally sound decision.
No verified performance data for the 'Pet People Get It' campaign is publicly available. No sales lift figures, media reach numbers, brand tracking results, or digital engagement metrics have been disclosed by AvoDerm, Central Garden and Pet Company, or Smith Brothers Agency in any publicly accessible source. The campaign received no documented recognition at the Cannes Lions, Effie Awards, The One Show, D&AD, Clio Awards, Webby Awards, or WARC Awards.
The only documented contemporary trade coverage of the campaign appeared in a MediaPost article by Larissa Faw, published March 14, 2017, described by MediaPost as covering a challenger brand launching its first national campaign. That coverage was descriptive and favourable in tone, treating the campaign's creative strategy as noteworthy for the category. The absence of negative critical commentary in trade press is a modest positive signal for a debut national campaign, though it does not constitute measurable performance evidence.
Structurally, the campaign's effectiveness argument rests on the coherence between its creative device and its strategic intent. The human-with-animal-head execution is category-disruptive by design, addressing precisely the awareness challenge that Smith Brothers President Michael Bollinger identified as existential for a challenger brand, as reported by MediaPost. For AvoDerm Natural in the United States, achieving sustained recall among self-identifying pet people — a consumer group that actively seeks out ingredient information and brand authenticity — would represent meaningful brand-building progress even without short-term sales metrics. The Clapboard Score of 54 out of 100 reflects that the campaign demonstrates clear strategic logic and creative commitment, while the limited documented evidence of reach or resonance constrains a higher assessment.
'Pet People Get It' is AvoDerm Natural's first national advertising campaign in the United States, launched in March 2017 and created by Smith Brothers Agency. It featured humans with dog or cat heads eating pet food to dramatise the idea that engaged pet owners understand and care deeply about what their animals eat. The brand is owned by Central Garden and Pet Company.
Smith Brothers Agency created the campaign for AvoDerm Natural. Chief Creative Officers Bronson Smith and Lindsey Smith led the agency team, with Craig Seder as Executive Creative Director, Jon Nicholson as Senior Art Director, and Rob Doerzbacher as Senior Copywriter, as documented in production records cited by Clapboard.
AvoDerm Natural formulates its dog food and cat food with avocados, positioning healthy skin and coat as the primary benefit. This specific ingredient differentiates the brand from competitors such as Blue Buffalo and Merrick Pet Care, which build their propositions around broader natural or whole-ingredient sourcing claims rather than a single hero ingredient.
AvoDerm Natural entered national advertising in 2017 as a challenger brand competing in a growing United States natural pet food market. As reported by MediaPost, Smith Brothers President Michael Bollinger stated that for a challenger brand, advertising that goes unnoticed makes everything else academic, framing national creative investment as a commercial necessity rather than a discretionary choice.
The 'Pet People Get It' campaign receives a Clapboard Score of 54 out of 100. The score reflects coherent challenger-brand strategic logic and a category-disruptive creative device, while acknowledging that the absence of publicly verified performance data and the campaign's single documented film asset limit a fuller creative-effectiveness assessment.
No awards for 'Pet People Get It' are documented in the records of Cannes Lions, Effie Awards, The One Show, D&AD, Clio Awards, Webby Awards, or WARC Awards. The campaign received favourable descriptive coverage in a March 2017 MediaPost article by Larissa Faw but no formal industry recognition has been publicly confirmed.
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