The AKC Marketplace

By Amy Fernandez

It’s official, AKC has taken the big plunge into the 21st century. Yes, we are 15 years beyond the turn of the century and everyone has touted its online prowess before. But before you click or flick the page, check this out.

By now, anyone with a public persona has taken their seat on the social media bandwagon, including the Pope and the NYPD. Until now, AKC has dabbled in this shark tank with its usual 19^th century aplomb. But that doesn’t mean they haven’t been thinking about it at 260 Mad. According to Chris Walker, Vice President of Marketing and Communications, next Monday the fancy will get its first glimpse of an ambitious venture he calls the dog world’s answer to Angie’s List. “AKC Marketplace is something we’ve been working on for almost three years,” which pretty much covers Walker’s tenure at AKC.   Explaining that his first directive was to grow AKC’s social media presence, he admits taking the predictable route. “Like anyone else, I started posting pictures of champion dogs, but the general public couldn’t relate to that.”

That revelation dovetailed with another emerging insight. “Our online breeder classified listings have been very successful,” he says, and he admits the presentation “is a little outdated.”  Yes, even AKC has recognized the need to spruce up its internet image. “When we rebuilt the website, we were able to do journey mapping to tell us what visitors were doing.” That highlighted some obvious implications already familiar to most of us. “We built it for our people, but the majority of visitors to the AKC site are not the core fancy.” And that group tends not to utilize online breeder classifieds for obvious reasons: they already know how to find dogs and breeders. “We started realizing that much of the information we provided there was irrelevant at that point.” Health clearances and lineage information amounted to information overload for someone trying to select a breed.

This revealing data compiled from journey mapping allowed AKC to identify precisely who, how and why visitors landed at AKC.org. “Typically, these are everyday dog owners and they take three main journeys when they come to the site.” As expected, they begin by narrowing down their choice of breeds based on their personality, lifestyle and expectations. “They spend a lot of time searching and comparing breeds. When we started interviewing people who came to the site, they told us straight up they wanted to see pictures and get a visual concept of the breed they were considering.”  Predictably, their second web journey was to find the right breeder. This is good to know since that has been the AKC brand image since 1884.

Walker’s reaction was, “We need to do it better.”  More specifically, “We overcomplicate things. When we started posting pictures of pets on the AKC site, the public went nuts. That was one of our biggest lessons.”    From a personal standpoint, he admits that this message resonated during a meeting with senior marketing from a major digital company. “We wondered why they were suddenly talking to us, egotistically thinking we had done something to change the game a little bit,” he says. Not quite. “They said they always wanted to be involved but assumed that AKC didn’t want anyone involved with them.”

AKC has assiduously cultivated that elitist persona, even though this practice stopped paying dividends several decades ago. In that respect, Walker came to the table with another notable advantage – a fresh perspective on the situation. “I am a recent convert.  I grew up in Belfast and I knew nothing about American dog sports.” Not quite, he did have one link to the game. “My grandfather showed some lovely Kerry Blues. In the ‘70s, he switched to Golden Retrievers.” That family legacy led to Walker’s current project. “I am always looking for information for my little Golden Retriever pup.  Right now, my lifesavers are AKC and his breeder’s phone number!”

This all sounds good, but how does it impact AKC’s core constituents? Walker explains that when AKC began parsing this marketing outreach scheme, “Our thought was to start with the clubs so our people can see the potential benefits of AKC Marketplace.” It’s a logical approach since this is “a club of clubs”. Still, Walker admits his back-to-basics approach wasn’t a universally easy sell.

Pitching it at a parent club committee meeting, he compares the experience to, “A senate subcommittee trial. I felt like I was going to be impeached for something.” But he met the challenge. “I asked everyone to close their eyes and think about their first dog. How many titles would that dog have won? Probably none, but don’t tell me that you didn’t love it as much as any dog you have owned had since then.”

Stressing AKC’s need to reconnect with the dog owning public, he says, “The world has changed. AKC is dealing with a different American public and we need a different approach. Right now, our two best friends are photos and videos. This creates a welcoming visual message for visitors.” Putting a finer point on it he adds, “Marketplace strips everything down to a one-page snapshot of who we are and how we want people to see us.”  Consequently, this format will also encourage us to become a bit more self-aware and image-conscious – and yes, occasionally we need that reminder.

“I think there is a part of us that needs to evolve and open up a little, and this tool will help us do that,” Walker says. So, exactly how is AKC Marketplace going to make that happen?  He explains, “When we started talking to clubs, the same problems kept coming up.”  Along with the escalating expenses for website hosting and maintenance, they also expressed frustration about their varying success driving traffic to their sites.  Calling AKC Marketplace “A webpage in a box”, Walker offers an impressive list of its potential capabilities like focusing web searches to targeted consumer interests, “The Marketplace will allow clubs to harness the power of AKC’s database to reach new dog registrants. We plan to create templated emails so they can target people in their local area to promote breed specific events”

Interactive profile pages, unlimited event listings, email outreach all sound good, but it’s not free. An AKC Marketplace Storefront will set you back $99 per year.  Individual listings run $29. Fees include expert assistance to build and optimize each customer’s web presence, ongoing tech support, ongoing updates and analysis of web traffic, and inbuilt AKC.org promotion.  Emphasizing another obvious concern, Walker adds that clubs will have great flexibility to customize their presentations with pictures and information. “No club is saying they have just enough members and don’t need anyone else,” he says. This platform will help them find potential recruits based on locality, breed, and specific interests. Overall, it looks like a fabulous deal considering how much clubs typically spend on hit or miss ventures for web hosting, management and tech support.

We will find out soon enough.

“We are going to launch Monday. We will probably have to walk some of the early users through the setup, but we shot some videos and put together an e-book that we are sending to all the club officers. The clubs are asking for help and we think this is a step in the right direction,” said Walker. True, but coordinating all this will demand plenty of hands-on assistance, especially since Walker envisions AKC Marketplace as something much, much more.  Those journey maps revealed another key traffic artery on AKC.org.

Walker says, “The third journey was new owners, especially the millennial dog audience, coming to AKC.org looking for expertise. They want to find good services in their area and meet other dog owners. Eventually, anything you want to do with your dog – an event, training class, groomer, vet – all of that will be there on AKC Marketplace. We said to ourselves, AKC was here first, we should own that space.  If we let somebody else do it, we will look back and regret not jumping in and doing it ourselves.”

That admirably ambitious perspective translates into some hardscrabble effort, beginning with a radically different approach to potential AKC customers. Direct marketing is a demanding venture in many respects, not the least of which is consumer interactions. AKC philosophy has traditionally distanced the organization from that minefield. Even so, it is inseparable from establishing that intimate level of internet contact with potential consumers. It has become a nonnegotiable aspect of the job at hand. We are accustomed to tweeting celebrities and CEO’s, but is AKC prepared to go one-on-one with its fans (and detractors)?

Walker confirms that AKC is gearing up to handle “those outlier cases. We are going to staff this heavily and moderate it. If anyone complains, we will investigate. A few people may want to upset the apple cart. We just have to get in there and work on it and do the right thing for dogs.”  He may be new to purebred dogs, but his approach reminded me of that well-worn adage, “Take care of the dogs and the kennel takes care of itself.” Countless AKC woes are rooted in its public image deficiencies.

“It’s all about outreach. We have to be aggressive and do what we can to get new people in the sport. If everyone stopped and talked to one person every day and told them why their breed is so great, the AR issue will go away.” And stealing a quote from Batman, he sums up the situation saying, “Maybe it’s not the website that you wanted, but it’s the website that you need.”

Like most battle-scarred veterans, I tend to reserve judgment about AKC’s “new, improved” ideas. But in this case, I admit that I am rooting for them.

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Posted by chesliepickett on May 11 2015. Filed under Current Articles, Featured. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0. Both comments and pings are currently closed.