IFE For Your Pet!

No, this is not an April Fools Story… but it is out there! There is a subliminal reason why we did a pet story this week — see below — however, the event did start us thinking out of the box and this is what the Hot Topic is all about this week.

We don’t know how pets are regarded in other countries, but in the US, dogs and cats are the new children. In fact, a 2007 study of US pet owner households showed that almost 50% considered the animals as a “family member.” As a $41 Billion dollar business, someone was bound to start an airline exclusively for pets. Enter Pet Airways, as it is known.

Their plan in the US is to begin a cross country destination service… flying your dogs and cats safely, comfortably and inexpensively beginning in July of this year. If you have ever “shipped” a pet, you know what a bum deal it is. We won’t go into the issues but you try flying in the cargo hold. Trauma is the word that best fits this situation. The mind can conjure any number of doomsday pet travel scenarios, and if the truth be known, the airlines would rather not do it either. You can check out their website but basically there will soon be an airline whereby pets travel in the cabin with a hostess (OK, a handler), and as far as we can tell, no InFlight Entertainment.

IFE is expensive, sure, but consider the flight from the animals perspective – no food, probably no water (no booze), no lav (for sure), constant and irritating noise without an iPod, just hundreds of dogs and cats. Pet Airways never did return our email but we suspect there will be no birds, or orangutans, no penguins, no diversity to keep it interesting. Without a doubt, there will be howling and growling. Keeping aural order will be virtually impossible!

That’s where Pet IFE comes in! Studies have shown that animal shelters that play animal heartbeat sounds calm down the inmates and stop howling. How about TV? Reruns of “Lassie”, “1001 Dalmatians”, even “Fritz the Cat” may have some beneficial effect - you get the idea. IFE may have a place on Pet Airways but we rather suspect the cabin will look more like Petco with amenities for human handlers, if there is any at all.

C’mon marketers, think out of the box! This message isn’t really about pet IFE, it’s for the IFE folks who are about just about to see the economic downturn rain on their IFE parade. We are seeing IFE sales drop-off and, no doubt the layoff cycle will start soon, if it has not already. Check out a few of the second tier players and their financial reports… peligroso! And speaking inside the box, we were nonplused when Boeing showed their next gen B737 without any real IFE breakthroughs. We know Boeing is not in the IFE business but where was the IFE marketing influence on the press piece? I expected mention of OLED’s, Bluetooth (or some wireless), gaming, but all we saw were LED colored ceilings that certainly were not designed for LED displays!

We may have written the pet IFE bit with tongue in cheek but if you check out the numbers, the annual US pet food market is almost 10 times that of the yearly world market for IFE! The point here is there are other markets for IFE and IFE technology. Sure, pet IFE is a bit wacky, but the lesson should be obvious — one either adopts new uses for existing products or uses existing technology for new markets… in this case, new transportation solutions. The only other option is to watch the revenue stream go down, and down.