Expert: Peter Gabany - 3/7/2004

Question
I am in an Advertising class and we have an assignment to come up with a new cat treat. In doing this assignment we have to look up info on other companies advertising budgets and media. How would I locate what media Iams has used to advertise?

Answer
I am uncertain how to find that particular information out. I do know that Iams was just purchased by a major grocery chain in the US and recently heard that the Iams brand is experiencing irreparable damage as they have altered their formulation to decrease costs of manufacture.

Eukenuba and other brands will be eating this up as the major grocer will undoubtedly spend beyond the costs that they save to reclaim market share. Pet stores are already moving out of the Iams line.

Each large volume manufacturer will have a their brand broken down into categories. Cat food, kitten food, dog and puppy as well as older animal formulations. Each one of these categories is assigned a brand manager and each manager assigned budget to allocate for each brand.

AC Neilsen will show volume of advertising purchased from previous years activity and they make some of this information available to students making legitiamte requests.

I hope that this is some benefit.

Pete