For a growing and increasingly influential share of the population, pets are family. Full stop. The bond between people and their pets has always mattered, but the level of care, spending, and consideration surrounding that bond has evolved. Whether you sell pet food or financial services, understanding this relationship is key to understanding how Gen Z and Millennials make decisions.
Think about the last brand you genuinely trusted. You know, the one you recommended to someone you care about or defended when a friend was skeptical. That kind of trust in a product doesn’t come from a well-placed ad or a strong social presence. It comes from a slow accumulation of evidence that a brand knows what it is talking about, means what it says, and will still be saying the same thing a year from now. It is built visibly over time, through consistency that compounds.
You may have met her at an event or worked with her already on a project. What you might not know yet is the full story of how she got here. The way Meg came to Britton, and back to Fort Wayne, says everything about who she is and what she is here to build.
Twenty years in this industry means we have seen a lot of things come and go. Every new platform and every shifting brand standard required us to figure out something we had never figured out before. We showed up, said yes, and made it work but there are some things that have stuck with us.
There is a person who has been buying from your company for years. They found your brand before it was popular, or maybe right when it was hitting its stride, and they decided it was worth trusting. They told their sister about you. They defended your products in a comment thread when someone complained. They gave your product to someone they love because recommending it felt like an extension of their own good judgment.
Pretend it’s 2006 and you’re a marketer at our Midwestern agency. The trade shows in Chicago and Atlanta are packed, and if you want to build a brand relationship, you have to be there. You walk the floor, have conversations, and shake a lot of hands. Back at the office, you listen to your voicemail twice a day and jot callback numbers on paper or your Palm Pilot. There’s no GPS, no Slack, no pinging someone a file. If a client needs to see work, you bring the work to them. Everything takes longer, and in a way, everything means more because of it.
The best work we've ever made at Britton didn't come from one person with a great idea working alone. It came from creative and strategic minds collaborating and genuinely building something together, making something neither could have reached on their own. After twenty years of doing this, we're more convinced of that than ever.
The consumers responding most strongly to our work didn’t share a single demographic profile. They weren’t defined by income, geography, or age. What united them was something far less obvious and far more powerful: they shared a set of values.
We love a good trade show. There’s something that happens on a great show floor that you can’t manufacture anywhere else. A buyer picks up a product, and something clicks. A retailer walks into a booth and immediately understands a brand. A designer stops mid-aisle because something caught her eye, and 10 minutes later she’s still there, still talking. That’s the moment we’re always chasing, and honestly, it never gets old.
This month, we are kicking off Britton’s 20th year of supporting our clients and their consumers, a psychographic group we call the New American Middle, with strategy-based marketing and emotive storytelling that speaks directly to the values they hold dear.
Is AI making our content better, or just more of the same? Can company and personal brands maintain authenticity when algorithms are doing the writing? And what happens to the human element that makes brands actually connect with people?
First impressions drive decisions. Discover how intuition shapes consumer choices and how smart branding can help your product stand out on a crowded shelf.
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