Business Week Calls Out Blue Buffalo Customers

Back in August, I wrote:

Let me say it simple: The folks who make Blue Buffalo think you are an idiot, and if you are buying their dog food, you are proving them right.

In that post, I noted that former softdrink poisoner marketer William Bishop had bragged to Business Week that:

“You can get into the market small with contract manufacturers making the stuff,” he says, displaying an easy candor. “Slap on a good label, come up with a slogan, and off you go,” he says. “There were already a lot of smoke and mirrors in how pet food was advertised, and that was the sort of stuff we were good at.”

That post noted that the National Advertising Division, an investigative arm of the ad industry’s self-regulating body, had just told Blue Buffalo to pull or modify certain because it was lying.

Since then, Blue Buffalo has had to admit that the core charges made by Purina -- that it was selling a mislabeled and adulterated product -- are true.

And guess what? Now that it has come out that Blue Buffalo dog food contains exactly what its marketing campaign has said it does not -- chicken byproduct meal -- the company is saying the mislabeling “poses no health, safety, or nutrition issues.”

Right.

In fact, dogs positively thrive on chicken byproduct meal, which is simply ground up whole chicken carcass without the feathers

But, of course Blue Buffalo built its brand telling idiots that exact opposite of that, didn't they?

As Paul M. Barrett at Business Week notes:

[I]f the inclusion of byproduct meal poses “no health, safety, or nutrition issue,” why did Blue Buffalo make such a big deal in its marketing about the exclusion of byproduct meal? The answer to that is Bill Bishop’s correct calculation that pet owners who think of their animals more as children than domesticated beasts will pay extra for food that’s actually no better for their dogs and cats.

Or, to put it simply: Blue Buffalo thinks you are an IDIOT.

And if you are still buying their crap, they are right.

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