Brandwatch Bulletin #102: Pet Popularity Perseveres

Have you taken one in?

14 January 2022

Today’s bulletin is taking a look at our animal companions, and whether we’re bringing more or less of them into our households. We’ll also contribute some data to the ongoing cat versus dog debate.

Let’s get to it.

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More pets, more happy homes

A pet about the house brings a certain kind of joy. Whether it’s the clicking of claws across tiles, a begging stare, or the sight of snoozing fur curled up by a radiator, the presence of a pet can improve any home.

And with many of us spending far more time at home the last couple of years, we were not surprised to find more people getting pets in 2020 compared to previous years. As we take our first steps into 2022, we wanted to see if this trend had continued through 2021.

To do so we created a query in Brandwatch Consumer Research to find mentions about getting new pets, specifically cats or dogs (and puppies and kittens too, of course). Looking at Twitter, Reddit, Tumblr, and forums, here’s what we found.

While mentions in 2021 were down slightly from the previous year, they remained far above the pre-pandemic years. This suggests that pet ownership continued to be higher than normal, likely due to the increased ease of looking after a pet for those now regularly working from home.

If this year’s data so far is anything to go by, the trend is set to continue.

We can also use our data to see what time of year most people are adding furry friends to their household.

Generally there are two times when pet ownership increases. Once in the summer months when walking a dog is a more attractive concept, and again through December to January. Presumably this will be due to pets being given as gifts, and people looking to start the new year with a new companion.

The eternal battle: cats versus dogs

Even for those who love both cats and dogs, they likely harbour some bias one way or another (whether they admit it or not). Of course there are others who are openly and gleefully partisan on the subject.

Putting the individual merits of cats and dogs aside, let’s take a look at the data.

For some time new dog posts held a comfortable lead over new cat ones. But we can see the gap narrowing in 2020, and narrowing even further in 2021 to the point where levels are near enough equal. In fact, in October and November of that year new cat posts took the top spot for the first time.

It’s early days, but could we be entering a new era of pet cat supremacy? Only time will tell. In the meantime, we’ll sign off with the following:

What should we cover next?

Is there a topic, trend, or industry you’d like us to feature in the Brandwatch Bulletin? We want to hear your ideas to make sure our readers are getting what they want. We may even ask to interview you if you’re involved with the topic.

Send any and all ideas to [email protected] and let’s talk.

Thanks for reading

That’s it for today, but we’ll be back next Friday. If you were forwarded this email and want in on the action, get subscribed to the Brandwatch Bulletin now.

Stay safe,

The Brandwatch React team

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