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- [00:00]
Hugh Lloyd
Foreign.
- [00:13]
Allison Schiff
Welcome to Ad Exchanger Talks, the podcast devoted to examining the issues and trends in advertising and marketing technology that matter most to you. I'm Allison Schiff. You're listening to Ad Exchanger Talks and my topic this week is Cats, Kitties, Gatos, because the future is feline. My guest is Hugh Lloyd, CMO of Whisker, the company behind Litter Robot, which is an automated self cleaning litter box. We'll talk about what it's like to be a marketer in a brand new category, the importance of content creation, why humor is an excellent marketing tool if you do it right, Whisker's approach to targeting and measurement, and lots of other good stuff. But before we get started, I've gotta plug our programmatic IO New York event coming up September 28th and 29th at the New York Marriott Marquee. It's time to unleash growth across the open web. And to do that, we've got a bang up agenda for you, including excellent speakers from Horizon Media, pmg, hey dude. Razorfish, Goodway Group, and more. Podcast listeners get 10% off with the promo code POD10. So whatcha waiting for? Get your ticket and see you there. Hey Hugh. Welcome to the podcast.
- [01:33]
Hugh Lloyd
Thank you so much for having me, Allison.
- [01:36]
Allison Schiff
So I believe you recently moved from Brooklyn to Detroit. I usually ask people to share something about themselves that not a lot of other people already know, but I'm just going to steal your thunder. I've been doing that a lot recently on this podcast. Sounds like it's working because I just go down the Rabbit hole on LinkedIn and I Google the heck out of my guests. But regards from Manhattan. One stop away on the L train from Williamsburg, where I know you used to live, but yeah. How's. How's Detroit?
- [02:04]
Hugh Lloyd
Detroit's been fantastic. We've really enjoyed being here. Obviously there's nothing like New York and, and when we relocated here, I don't think the goal was to make Detroit New York, but it's such a moment in time for Detroit. Shout out to Detroit. The art scene, music scene, great history, great energy, fantastic restaurants, bars. Detroit's having a real moment right now, so we're really excited to be here.
- [02:33]
Allison Schiff
I'm just going to toss this out there. Have you seen the movie Barbarian by any chance?
- [02:37]
Hugh Lloyd
I don't think so.
- [02:40]
Allison Schiff
It's a horror movie that takes place in Detroit, but it's. It's really interesting. Recommend it highly.
- [02:46]
Hugh Lloyd
Well, that I, I can imagine. There are certainly plenty of fantastic settings for something that could even be post apocalyptic. I don't know if that's the case in this one, but.
- [02:57]
Allison Schiff
Well, do you have pets? You must. And I want to hear all about your pets before we talk about your job.
- [03:02]
Hugh Lloyd
Absolutely. Yeah, definitely. So just for context, I grew up with cats, multiple cats, over the course of my entire childhood. And my primary responsibility growing up was scooping the litter box. So this is a problem solution that's near and dear to my heart.
- [03:18]
Allison Schiff
So you have trauma?
- [03:19]
Hugh Lloyd
You could call it trauma. Exactly. You could call it that. I certainly loathed it. And at the time, at least there was no litter robot. So sad on me. But into my adult life now I have dogs and my mom, my sister, others still have cats and so I still get to enjoy them. But two dogs. One is a boxer pit mix named Gary Busey and the other is a Boston terrier named Hachi.
- [03:47]
Allison Schiff
Do they get along?
- [03:49]
Hugh Lloyd
They do. They have kind of a sort of older brother, younger sister relationship. But generally we, we catch them snuggling.
- [03:56]
Allison Schiff
I have a cat named Mermaid. She's a black cat, 13 years old, and she recently moved in with a dog because I moved in with a person who had a dog, has a do dog, Oliver. He's an Australian sheepdog. And they did not get along for a very long time, but they finally somewhat coexist and only have minor flare ups.
- [04:20]
Hugh Lloyd
That, that's amazing. Yeah, I know. That's always a scary moment. We certainly had that with our second dog. You're like, well, what exactly do we do if they don't ever get along? Is that sustainable? So I hear you.
- [04:33]
Allison Schiff
We ignored every bit of advice on the Internet which said to keep them separate. Oh my God. For a period of time and slowly integrate them. Like we, we live in New York City. We can't do that.
- [04:43]
Hugh Lloyd
Yeah.
- [04:44]
Allison Schiff
So I want to do a little resume rewind on you just to introduce you to our listeners. So you've worked at some of the most established consumer brands in the world. I mean, you were the CMO for Sir Kensingtons, which is the condiments brand if people don't know it. But it's owned by Unilever.
- [04:59]
Hugh Lloyd
That's right.
- [05:00]
Allison Schiff
And you spend time at Clif Bar, Old Navy and the Gap. I'm a big Gap fan. I have the Gap credit card. Uh, so I basically am like, you know, basically the top my head to the tip of my toe is Gap. Um, you were the CMO of Cook Unity, which is a chef to consumer meal delivery platform. And you even founded your own travel tech company called Mozi, which is very Clever. And now you're the CMO of Whisker, which is why you've been talking about pet so much as of September 2025, which is the maker of a self cleaning litter box.
- [05:33]
Hugh Lloyd
Um, and amazing job.
- [05:34]
Allison Schiff
You guys also have automatic pet feeders. What would you say though is the through line for you what attracts you to a brand?
- [05:43]
Hugh Lloyd
Yeah, I have had probably, well first and foremost consumer. That's, that's kind of deep in my DNA as a marketer. But I'm also really attracted to challenges for marketing that are about lifting something that seems fairly pedestrian or commodity forward into being a lifestyle choice. So Sir Kensington's was really interesting because that was a brand that ultimately was selling condiments. And even when I told my friends I was taking the job, they're like the condiment company. But the exciting part about the job is it was far more than that. And we were actually able to to utilize the platform of the brand to do things like launch a feature film that was in Cannes. So I think in all cases, including my time at Method, I'm running marketing for Method Hand Soap. On its face that looks pretty pedestrian. So equally as well as that, we also have other opportunities to lean into connected tech. And I've actually done that a few times as well, mostly in consulting before this. But once I was contacted by Whisker and I realized that there was a problem to be solved in helping a company solve one of the most pedestrian problems in a household, it just immediately resonated with me.
- [07:06]
Allison Schiff
Why? Why did they need a cmo? And Whisker built a multi hundred million dollar business. They sold something like 2 million litter robots and they never had someone in charge of marketing or at least not someone that was on top of everybody in, in the CMO role. And that's a pretty good run. So what changed? Why did they decide that now is the right moment to bring on a cmo?
- [07:32]
Hugh Lloyd
Yeah, well, great question. Well, for the record, our, our CEO Jacob started in this company 11 years ago as the head of marketing. So you can imagine that marketing is deeply ingrained in this business's DNA. And Jacob often jokes that even as he made his way to CEO, he still stayed cmo. And that's why I believe so many amazing stories around growth and around driving an incredible product and an incredible brand really come back to the fact that we have a marketer at the helm. It's been the source of incredible learning journey for me at this business as well. But to answer your question, why this moment in time in October we launched a series of new products and as this business has grown tremendously, we reached kind of an inflection point where we know that this business could be 3, 5, 10x the size of what it is today, even though it is a good sized company. But as we can probably dig in later, the category is massive. This company created the category, now leads the category, but it is still gargantuan. So the question is how do we unlock that next wave of growth? And I think that's where they started looking into letting Jacob do his full time job as CEO and have an executive step in and start to take on that challenge.
- [09:02]
Allison Schiff
People love their pets, but I can say it as a pet owner, scooping litter is a really unpleasant task. And I want to make sure that our listeners have a clear picture of what Whisker is. The main product is the litter robot. It's a self cleaning, connected app enabled litter box. And yeah, they're not cheap. I think they started around 600 and go to over 900 bucks. But it's got all these features, like features that your plastic litter box in your bathroom doesn't have. So there's multi cat face identification which is wild and health monitoring that can flag if your cat's litter box like behavior looks off. And it feels more, I mean it feels almost like a, like an app enabled bidet or something like Peloton or more like Apple than Fancy Feast.
- [09:53]
Hugh Lloyd
Yes. So I'm going to use that.
- [09:56]
Allison Schiff
Can I say you are, are you a pet company or are you a tech company or for you, is that the same thing?
- [10:03]
Hugh Lloyd
I would say for us it is the same thing. We do talk about ourselves as a tech company. I think as you just called out, there are a lot more analogs for that. Often pet companies get relegated to, as you also called out, food companies, pet accessory companies. So when we get lumped into that bucket, often there's misunderstanding in terms of what we do as a business and really our mission as an organization. Whereas you know, Peloton is probably a great example or any connected device you have, even my car is a connected device. And ultimately it, it allows you to think about the way that you interact with that device is not bound to your relationship with your home or with your pet, even with your cat in this instance, but rather with your phone and the data. So we love the idea that there is obviously a, what were we calling it a while back? Internet of things and a connected device orientation that just continues to grow in the household. And the hardest part, as you talk about the price point, the hardest part of this job, if I'm honest, is that we have a lot of work to do and a lot of places to go with the brand. But we created a category, so that means that the challenge is that we need to introduce a category, not just the brand, to a lot of people. And with that sticker shock often comes a question of how could I justify this? I've never had to justify this before. But the parallel we like to talk about here is if you're used to washing dishes by hand, which as a New Yorker is all too common, you might stay at a friend's house and there's a dishwasher, and it's just a wildly better experience. And either a, you go back and if you're able, you'll go buy a dishwasher, spend whatever 500,000 bucks for dishwasher and solve that problem. And all of a sudden, you're no longer washing dishes, which is incredible. But more times than not, next time you go back and wash dishes again, you'll just be sitting there thinking about a dishwasher. And I think that that is the journey that many cat parents go through when they come to understand what litter robot does.
- [12:15]
Allison Schiff
The washing machine comparison is really. It resonates with me because I didn't have a washing machine. I'm sorry, a dishwasher my entire childhood and even into my adulthood. I only have had one for the past year. And I moved in with my fiance. He. He has one. And I washed dishes manually for, like, three months. I didn't even use it yet. It was there because the. My. My routine was what it was.
- [12:45]
Hugh Lloyd
Yeah.
- [12:45]
Allison Schiff
And so I. I read this interesting interview that you did recently with the Drum, and you made this point that your real competitor isn't necessarily another litter box brand. And like you were saying, this is a. A newish category, but it's. It's inertia. And I really can attest to that, too, because I am one of those people, like I said, with the plastic tub full of litter in the bathroom. So your competitor, to me, you know, is the customer who's quietly decided that scooping cat litter is just one of life's annoyances. Just like you have to wash dishes if you don't have a dishwasher. And that framing, of course, has to impact how you think about market, because you're not just trying to win a comparison. You're trying to change someone's view about something. So how different is the marketing playbook when your real competition is complacency? Rather than some clear, obvious rival skew.
- [13:39]
Hugh Lloyd
Yeah, no, fantastic question. I mean, there's plenty of low hanging fruit in the problem solution camp. So you can imagine as marketers, one of the kind of 101 things that we do is the life that you had before the product versus the life after. And believe me, that is a vivid comparison. You know, one of the things that we do, we just launched a platform called the Futurist Feline. And the Futurist Feline is really meant to address cat stigma. One of the challenges in that cat parents face is to own a cat is to have an open box of poop in your house. And while you may put it in a closet or in the bathroom or downstairs or whatever your solution is, it's still an open box of poop in the house. So I think that the challenge is once someone gets fed up enough with that and wants to remove that level of friction, whether it be odor, whether it be time, inconvenience, grossness of many kinds, we're there for you. I think when we think about how do we reach people with a new category, that is something I've been studying a long time, long before being here. And there is a, there is a number of really fascinating ways that we can talk about this. As I mentioned, Futurist Feline is our way of bringing people up into another tier in their identity as a cat owner. And as we think about this innovation, it of course solves a bunch of problems. But I think it is also maybe a bit of a slower slogan to getting people to convert. You know, we often talk about our conversion window as being three to six months long. And that just means, you know, what that, ultimately what that really means for us is we have to double down in the consideration period. We need to do a lot of education, we need to bring people along, we need to continue to tap them, reinforce them, because it is a process of understanding how to justify the purchase. And we hear all the time from people who, well, to back up, mentioning the price point, often people default straight to this idea that it is a premium product in a premium category and we are premium in the category. But we hear all the time from people that they saved for our product. We have financing on the product, we have all the, all sorts of the things that really are meant to break down the barriers so that it's accessible to anyone because we believe in it as a life changing device just that much.
- [16:16]
Allison Schiff
So you mentioned the pretty long average buyer journey. How do you compress that timeline without cannibalizing organic demand?
- [16:27]
Hugh Lloyd
That's a great question. I mean, organic demand is massive for us, like base demand. The idea that after 25 years, this brand, again I'm going to keep saying it, has built a category and just an SEO value alone, there is incredible equity here. So it is a pretty powerful moment in terms of talk value, word of mouth, that this brand has been on the forefront of this category for so long. Again, the way that we think about marching our way through and really shortening that period is continuing to grow brand awareness, making sure that more people know about the brand and about the product, increasing people's opportunity to share with their friends, building a better brand and of course making better content. And the more we do this, the more we see that window shorten through time.
- [17:22]
Allison Schiff
Well, let's talk more about the media strategy. So I know you guys are heavily invested in YouTube and CTV, which makes a lot of sense, although a lot of performance marketers treat those channels with suspicion because the attribution is tricky. But you know, for a category creator, the upper funnel and the lower funnel are almost the same thing because the awareness moment and the consideration moment are going to happen potentially simultaneously for a lot of buyers. Like someone who's never heard of a self cleaning litter box doesn't need to be nurtured through the stages, they just need to be shown the product because they get it, they know what the problem is. So what does a successful upper funnel moment actually look like in your data? Like what's the signal that tells you someone just had their weight? Oh my God, this exists moment.
- [18:06]
Hugh Lloyd
Yeah, exactly. Well, I mean there's a few things that we've done that really lean into this strategy. We have a really robust in house creative team and specifically we even have an in house director and producer. So it's important for us just right off the bat to create very high quality and sticky content that enables that moment that you're talking about where when someone finds us, they're probably stepping into a world that's very enticing. That's the goal. So for us, the, the opportunity there, as you mentioned, is both a high funnel to conversion sometimes right off the bat, typically again, that is probably a little bit more of a higher household income. Oh my God, you solved a problem. But the vast majority of people are going to see that as well and start on a process, start on a journey. And of course that's where we get Google and Meta and all of the channels involved in making sure that we continue to hit them. You know, we, we by kind of some of our more recent calculation are often hitting this consumer 15 times. So it is just a opportunity to continue to bring moments that step into their world where they are in order to tell this story.
- [19:28]
Allison Schiff
So one more before we take a quick break. I know this campaign predates you, but I want to talk about the don't be a Scooper campaign that you guys ran in 2020, because it's a cool example of leaning into a strategy that a lot of brands would run away from. And I know that has been reflected in more recent campaigns that you've put out. But yeah, I mean, you're selling a product where you quite literally have to spend a lot of time talking about poop and pee. And I think a lot of brands would treat that as a liability to minimize, but you obviously can't do that. So you have to lean into it. But, you know, you, I guess you could just like vaguely reference those, you know, outcomes and then talk about the technology and the design. But you decided to talk about the poop and like, make it funny. Humor is a great marketing tool. So. So how, how else are you guys being funny? And why does humor work for you? Instead of making a glossy product video that just shows all the features. Oh, my God. And there's like light glinting off the side, almost like it's a car or something.
- [20:35]
Hugh Lloyd
Yeah, yeah, no, that's a. It's a great question. I mean, there's definitely multiple aspects of being a marketer that live in that question there for me. We certainly do have the Apple esque, you know, auto industry style content, and we do tell a story that is about the sharpness of the technology, the power of the design and so on. So all of that is there. We have that for people who love that. But, you know, at the, at the heart of don't be a scooper. And still today, the true aspiration of this brand is to show up in culture. And when we think about showing up in culture, often that's not another finely tuned product. I mean, the innovation itself is powerful enough to show up in culture, I would say here. But the next wave of that for us is obviously going to be taking opportunities to disrupt, make people laugh, tickle the taboo, do whatever we need to do in order to weasel our way into people's lives. The challenge here is that often these taboo subjects, we just don't want to talk about them, we don't want to address them. So I feel the opportunity for brands is obviously that we can, as marketers, we can embrace those taboos. And when we do, we create inclusion and people step into this world and say, oh, this is a safe place where people talk about those unpleasantries in life and it allows us to find more deep intimacy with our customers.
- [22:07]
Allison Schiff
And there's just nothing funnier than poop.
- [22:09]
Hugh Lloyd
I mean, it never gets old, does it?
- [22:12]
Allison Schiff
Well, sometimes it does if you don't scoop frequently enough.
- [22:14]
Hugh Lloyd
Well, there you go. Poop itself gets old. Yes, Poop jokes, timeless.
- [22:19]
Allison Schiff
All right, well, stick with us for more poop jokes. Be back in a chance. Foreign. Welcome back. And I want to talk a little bit about measurement because you've been building out multitouch attribution since you joined and it's one of your priorities to focus more on incrementality and unit economics. For a brand like Whisker, where the product has a long consideration cycle like we were talking about in a high price point and a customer who probably isn't going to replace it for multiple years, I think measurement is genuinely hard. I imagine there's also a lot of word of mouth which is super hard to track. So, yeah, I mean, take me through how you're approaching incrementality testing and measurement, which is like catnip for our listeners. They love incrementality. And what are the best metrics that are indicators that a channel or a tactic is working for you and deserves more money?
- [23:29]
Hugh Lloyd
Yeah, sure. Yeah. So as you mentioned, we just launched MTA that's just a couple months old in this business. And one of the most eye opening findings is how much traditional last click reporting undervalues awareness and interests channels. So I, you know, in our world, Facebook, TikTok, demand gen, even Snapchat often look weak in last click reporting. And that was kind of one of the first things that we came across as. You're exactly right. As an organization, we have some real headwinds in terms of understanding the value of the customer and ultimately understanding what channels are working for incrementality. Right now we're doing holdouts and some relatively basic things. I wouldn't say that we're masters at that at this point, but it's given us opportunities to really start to understand the channels that we're using with a little bit more depth. So, you know, this, this idea that we can understand sequencing for our channels more so than understanding or leaning on channels themselves. So our data shows that these strong journeys typically start with discovery channels, but then we move through email, sms, and ultimately what closes are like search, shopping, direct, those kinds of things. So again, I mentioned this before, but like 15 sessions, five different channels, you know, over weeks and weeks, sometimes longer. And then as you mentioned also the, the real challenge for us is, you know, as how did you hear about us? Which, you know, as marketers, we like, love and hate often the, or always our very first highest scoring how did you hear about us? Is friends and family. So that also sends us into a spin around the value of our organic and the challenge that we have in really understanding that from an attribution perspective.
- [25:40]
Allison Schiff
I know you're early in your process, but that really is the first step, realizing that you have a measurement problem. Right. And experimenting and being open to playing around.
- [25:49]
Hugh Lloyd
Yeah, exactly.
- [25:51]
Allison Schiff
So you, you already mentioned the future is Feline, which is Whisker's brand platform. But one premise underlying it is that society has a dog bias which we, which we didn't talk about. I know you're a, you're a dog dad, but cats are, they're misunderstood and their owners are culturally underestimated or sometimes made fun of. Cat lady, stuff like, and I think cats are fantastic companions. And yeah, I mean, as a longtime cat owner and a very recent dog owner, I, you know, I, I love them both, but I, I really love cuddling with my cat. So, I mean, the bet here is that Whisker can attach itself to a real cultural shift and cat ownership is up a lot. The last number I saw was like 23% in 2024. I'm sure it's more since then. More than 49 million households in the US have a cat and only, I don't know, like two and a half or three million use an automatic litter box.
- [26:51]
Hugh Lloyd
That's right.
- [26:52]
Allison Schiff
So that gap is your entire market. It's a really big market. But like, is cat person in air quotes? Is that actually a targetable identity in your media plan? Like, are there any behavioral or contextual signals that can help you reliably find your person before they've self identified?
- [27:12]
Hugh Lloyd
That is a great question. I mean, there's so much to that. You know, just for context, as you mentioned, there's probably about 3 million automatic self cleaning litter boxes out there. There are 49 million cat households out of, at least in the U.S. about 132 million households in general. So that gives you a sense of not only the delta between households that have automatic litter boxes, but also the opportunity in terms of making more cat households. And ultimately that is the objective in the future of Speline is really understanding that there is a shift going on in culture which you've done Your research. And that shift ultimately is more cats are being adopted. We're seeing adoption, the growth rate in adoption for dogs declining, cats increasing. And we think that part of that is about championing the cat parent and championing cats and ultimately telling a story around breaking down those walls, breaking down those stigmas. And part of that is bringing the fights to dogs. Believe it or not, tongue in cheek,
- [28:22]
Allison Schiff
of course, dogs don't even know what's going on.
- [28:24]
Hugh Lloyd
Yeah, they don't even know. But here it comes. No, and you also mentioned something really great. We call it the plaid strategy. But ultimately, the challenge for us is not necessarily focusing too heavily on demographics. Obviously they have their place, but we're really looking at those signals. So what are the opportunities that we have to meet someone at a time of their life where it is the right time to get a litter robot? And you'll see those quite possibly year in one. Now, we had identified, obviously when people move, when people move in together, a huge one for us that we're diving into right now is pregnancy just simply
- [29:05]
Allison Schiff
because you're not supposed to touch litter when you're pregnant. Right? Yeah.
- [29:09]
Hugh Lloyd
Toxoplasmosis is very real and it's very dangerous. And in many cases that we've seen in the past, people actually give their cat up for adoption when they get pregnant. And we, we sincerely hope that does not have to be the case, but instead just don't handle the scooping anymore. It's pretty simple. So there's a series of these style or these signals that we see that allow us to understand how to target and to reach those people.
- [29:38]
Allison Schiff
So there might be another target for you. Although this is a sensitive category, so I don't know how you would do it, but my mother had a liver transplant because she had an autoimmune disorder. This was in 2021, totally successful. And she was told by her doctors, I didn't. We didn't have pets growing up. I had a turtle and a goldfish buried in the backyard. But. But yeah, I mean, we were told certain foods she couldn't eat because of potential bacterias, so she can never eat them again. And also she's never allowed to touch litter. She can't be near it. It's really not good for her. And I was thinking when the doctor was telling us this, how sad it would be for someone who's just gone through such an experience. I mean, it's really not easy having a transplant in the recovery, and then you might have to give up your cat on top of it all so depressing.
- [30:29]
Hugh Lloyd
It's really sad. I mean, we have heard incredible stories about what this product has enabled for people. I, you know, you saved my cat and that's both, you saved me from having to get rid of my cat, but also the, the data and the information that you deliver to me daily helped me understand vulnerabilities that my cat had. You know, a phrase that we use regularly is we tell you what your cat can't. And that's our way of basically saying cats can be a mystery. Sometimes they're a little bit cagey, sometimes that's why they get a bad rap. But ultimately at the heart of that, we have a product that allows your cat to basically walk into a portal a few times a day and give you some information. And for your listeners who aren't familiar with the product, product that information being pushed back to an app and that app telling you that, oh my God, my cat has been in the litter robot now 10 times today. That is a, a, a wildly disturbing signal that should lead you to go investigate, take your cat to the vet. So we see that. We also see things as fun as litter robot saved my marriage. So when cat scooping is getting in the way of, of intimacy or getting in the way of causing fights, you know, this product really helps remove that task and bring harmony in the home. At least I'd like to think so.
- [31:55]
Allison Schiff
Well, I did have, it wasn't an argument recently, but my fiance did say to me, I really, it smelled really bad in the bathroom a couple of days ago. I, I really should have scooped it and like I of course ended up scooping it. You thought that. Why didn't you do it?
- [32:11]
Hugh Lloyd
Take initiative, man.
- [32:12]
Allison Schiff
Yeah, yeah. So let's talk a little bit about data actually, because there's a lot of data that owners of a litter robot will get about their pets because it's essentially a connected device that happens to clean litter. And that means that you're sitting on a very rich first party data asset. I mean, you know who your customers are. You know their cats names, I assume, kind of like Chewy does. I get emails from Chewy all the time. Like, hey, it looks like mermaids out of trees rates. You can see usage patterns flagging the health signals like frequency and output and all of that stuff that might indicate a problem. That really is very genuinely valuable data. But I don't know if it, is it activatable? And I don't know if activatable is a word, but is it activatable on the marketing side? For like retention and upsell and lookalike modeling and all of that. Or I don't know, it's how many times someone's cat pees? Mostly just a signal to take them to the vet.
- [33:10]
Hugh Lloyd
Yeah, no, I mean, our primary goal is to offer a utility to our customers. So the value of having that data is ultimately to serve our customers. We believe that in serving our customers that data, we strengthen the bond between the utility of the product and the essential nature of that product in their life. And in doing so, we become a trusted source for our customer. And ultimately that becomes a flywheel in and of itself. They become fanatical about the brand and about the product, as we've seen. And that fanaticism means that they're telling others. So we believe that data is actually enabling a pretty powerful marketing engine in and of itself. Now, if your references are more maybe. How does it enable personalization and some other things like that? We certainly do have that. But I believe the kind of, the more product driven organic flywheel of happy customers with better bonds with their cat and a more rich perspective on their cat's health is a very loyal customer and we can continue to serve them up useful items, services, consumables, digital products and so on.
- [34:31]
Allison Schiff
I don't know if this is a crazy question, but is pet health data sensitive? I mean, it's obviously not covered by HIPAA or anything, and it's not regulated the way human health data would be. But like, if a customer stopped to think about the fact that their litter box knows that their cat might be sick, like, would they necessarily always be comfortable with how that data is being used? So how do you have to think about that?
- [34:52]
Hugh Lloyd
Yeah, I mean, you know, our data, the data, generally speaking, if we utilize it, is anonymized, of course, and there aren't any hipas in the cat world, fortunately or unfortunately or whatever. But, but yeah, we. We've also had customers who have even left us or possibly need more information, come back to us and ask for their data as well. So we know that the data is very important. We actually have a lot more data than probably your vet does on your cat. A lot more. You know, my guess is we have the largest longitudinal behavior data set on domestic cats in the world. After 25 years of collecting data on cats, and you could say, well, it's probably primarily poop and pee data, but actually we, we take weight data as well. And, and it's only growing a series of other things. So we safeguard that data. We believe in privacy, obviously. And in terms of protections, I don't think they're formally out there, but we take it very seriously.
- [36:06]
Allison Schiff
What's funny is I recently had the executive director of the California Consumer Privacy association on this podcast, and we're talking about data and protecting data. And now I have the CMO of the company that makes the litter robot. And we're also talking about data protection, weirdly.
- [36:22]
Hugh Lloyd
Exactly. I mean, it's very relevant. You know, it's very relevant. And I think people deserve to have control over the data, and that is obviously a concern of ours.
- [36:31]
Allison Schiff
So I want to change tax slightly and talk about AI, because Whisker has drawn a pretty hard line. I was going to say in the sand, but I guess in the litter.
- [36:41]
Hugh Lloyd
Oh, good one. Wow.
- [36:42]
Allison Schiff
Okay. So no AI generated cats and no AI generated copy. And it's a very principled stance I have plot it, but I imagine it's also a cost. So how do you justify that to who you report to when AI could theoretically make your content operation significantly cheaper and faster?
- [37:01]
Hugh Lloyd
Yeah, well, I mean, I'll just be clear. We are driving AI into pretty much every corner of this business, probably like most businesses are these days. There is incredible capability to move faster, stronger, service our customers better, like, and we will not, not do that, you know. But why no AI generated cats? For us, it is as subtle as maybe something that's imperceptible to know the difference between what is a being being represented in content that is like your own cat. And I believe, we all believe that the value of having that be a real cat. Yes, of course. We want to support cat talent, and we will continue to do that. We want. We don't want to see cats losing their jobs.
- [37:54]
Allison Schiff
A job.
- [37:56]
Hugh Lloyd
Cats need a job. I mean, cats are very busy, don't get me wrong. But, but no, in all seriousness, we believe the bond between people and cats is. Is both valuable and also subtle. And even though in making imagery or making videos, maybe it would be imperceptible. We like the idea that showing real cats, real robots, like a real environment, real language from real people is still what makes the personal connection in marketing and, and product marketing. We, we. We know that a lot of things will be replaced in this era, and we're going through one of the most powerful and amazing times, I would say, in marketing and obviously the world as we see AI continue to roll in and become even more powerful. But I do believe there's extreme value in keeping the intimate personal touches that we have between us as people. And I think that extends to our pets as well.
- [39:00]
Allison Schiff
Totally. Kudos.
- [39:02]
Hugh Lloyd
Thank you.
- [39:03]
Allison Schiff
And something else I think won't change is that people like good, funny stuff. And so as we near the end of our time, I wanted to talk about two other recent campaigns that are pretty different on the surface, but I feel like they came from exactly the same place and they're both really funny. So Mary Boxmas, which is a holiday campaign you ran last year that was built around the truth that every cat owner knows in their bones that you could spend, you know, like $600 on a litter robot, and your cat is going to spend the next three days exclusively living in the box it came in. And also the other one, Catarr, spelled C A T A I R E, pronounced like cat hair. You know, like a couture.
- [39:51]
Hugh Lloyd
That's right. Perfect.
- [39:53]
Allison Schiff
So it took another universal cat owning experience and reframed it as a. As a luxury fashion feature, complete with a fake high end fashion line and designer sweater that, like, is naturally enhanced, quote unquote, by the fur of real cats that were up for adoption. You actually made these sweaters out of cat hair and made them look really fancy and then sold them on ebay to raise money for animal rescue in Michigan, which is so funny. But both campaigns are funny because they're just, like, true. So what's the creative process that gets you there? And I would love if you could share something from the graveyard of ideas that followed the same formula, but you were just like, nah, we can't do that.
- [40:36]
Hugh Lloyd
Yeah, well, I mean, talk about now. We can't do that. We found out in the Kater work, which was April Fools, by the way, that you cannot make garments out of cat hair. So the garment itself was a vintage. We. We chose sweaters that have an extra pet hair, like, appeal.
- [40:58]
Allison Schiff
I thought it was really made out of cat hair. Not.
- [41:00]
Hugh Lloyd
Not made out of cat. Yeah. Not made out of cat hair. Not legal. But the. The actual illegal.
- [41:09]
Allison Schiff
I thought you were saying it just doesn't weave. When you said you can't, you literally can't.
- [41:13]
Hugh Lloyd
Yeah, well, we also weren't, I believe, our level of ambition as a team. It's like, are we going to. Are we going to go create new garments? We knew that there was hard work to be done elsewhere, but. But we thought the actual both of these come from an insight. You're absolutely right, which is we tried to make cat hair on your clothes fashionable much, much in the way that a couture brand would. And so telling that story, at least for us, was a Fun way to introduce something that felt super premium, but really just spoke to what every cat owner knows right off the bat sitting there with their sticky roller. So that, that was, that was just an April Fool's joke for us, but really did mean making lasting impact and featuring some cats that needed love. We, we had pretty much the same ambition for the holidays for Mary Boxmiths, which did exactly that. We, essentially the line was that we were selling a $899 cardboard box with a free litter robot inside. Gift with purchase. So, yeah, obviously in the midst of all this, we have a massively talented in house creative team. Both of those campaigns were built in house and produced in house. That is the way we do things here in Detroit. And the creative team themselves, wildly talented. Our head of creative, wildly talented comes from the agency world. And again, that we have all of this resourced internally and is able to allow us to go from concept, really from insight to concept to production and do that pretty fluidly. So we will continue to do that. We're in the midst of doing that right now with the Futures Feline that launches on July 7th. So we're really excited to see a host of new commercials for the brand come out that, that we predict will rival. Don't be a scooper.
- [43:18]
Allison Schiff
So with that in mind and last question, and I think it's one that you're very well positioned to answer. So Whisker's official position is that cats are superior to dogs. You are a dog owner. You have to defend that position to a room full of dog people that cats are superior to dogs. What's your argument? Because I, I'm going to crib from it to some people in my life. Okay, don't think that cats are better than dogs.
- [43:46]
Hugh Lloyd
Now, now, to be fair, we don't feel like cats are superior. We just feel like cats are marginalized and cat parents are marginalized and we want them to have their moment in the sun. You know, when you see the Futures feline ads that will be coming out, they have a tongue in cheek approach to telling a story about how dog ownership does not have something as futuristic and as easy as a litter robot in it. And so while we take shots at dog owners and dogs, of course we're doing it with fun. We know that a lot of our cat households also have dogs in them. We just want cats to have their equal moment in the sun rather than crazy cat lady like oh, my dog's or oh, my cat's cool, because it's like a dog. Which one of my friends says so. So we, we want cats to find that moment in culture, and we're already seeing that in, in celebrity and so on. People, quote, unquote, coming out of the closet as cat owners and really being proud about it in a way that, like, maybe hasn't happened. So we're really excited about that. We want to champion that effort.
- [44:57]
Allison Schiff
Well, Hugh, it's, it's been a treat.
- [45:01]
Hugh Lloyd
Same. Same with you, Allison. Appreciate your time.