YouTube Challenge: Purina vs Nature's Variety

The Last of the Big 3

By: Zak Priest

We're on to the last big platform of this Purina vs Nature's Variety blogging mini-series, YouTube. Let's jump right in.

Purina

As a consumer, I tend not to like company YouTube channels and Purina's is no different. Their numbers aren't bad, 7,701 subscribers and 7,867,774 views, but their content is. It's all ads, and not the "this is really entertaining and innovative so I don't care if it's an ad" kind of ads, just the plain old run of the mill hard sell stuff that I'm forced to sit through (not by choice) before I can watch Good Mythical Morning. I understand that kind of stuff needs a home, but can't it live among stuff that's a little more engaging? I guess making this basic stuff makes it a little easier to have regular uploads, which is something they are good at (a video every two weeks or so). Out of their last five videos, this was their most successful.

I also wanted to note that comments, likes, and dislikes are disabled on their channel. Maybe it's related to all the negative activity on their Facebook, who knows?

Nature's Variety

In hindsight I probably should have just made a template for these Nature's Variety segments. Relatively low stats due to being a smaller company. Quality content that is posted infrequently, sometimes months apart. Positive customer interaction. To save time let me give you the straight stats.

Subscribers: 498

Total Views: 963,259

Average Upload Frequency: Once every 3 months or so

Most Successful Recent Video: Our Story

Conclusion

It's safe to say that these two brands are more or less the same across the big 3 social media platforms. Even though I'm not a fan of their content, Purina wins the YouTube Challenge. Their channel was overall more successful.

Youtube Challenge: Petcurean vs. Canidae

Comparing the YouTube channels of Petcurean and Canidae Pet Food Brands

Kelsey LeCoure


In my last two posts regarding the Facebook and twitter pages of Canidae and Petcurean, Canidae was the clear winner. This post is going to shake things up a bit for sure.

Canidae's Youtube channel only has 5 uploads over the course of 7 years. Comparatively, Petcurean's channel has over 45 videos from the last 5 years. Already, we can see that Petcurean is better utilizing their YouTube channel than Canidae is.

Many of the videos on Petcurean's channels are regarding your pet's health. There are videos that discuss how to safely change your pet's food, Fibre and it's affect on your pet's health, and much more! These videos are short and engaging to watch (Average approx. 2 minutes each).

Petcurean has 1600 subscribers, 2,129,397 Views, and 5 links to other social networking sites - Facebook, Twitter, Pinterest, Google +, and their website.

Canidae Pet Foods does not list their number of subscribers on their YouTube page. The stats that are listed include: 288,640 views and they have 1 link to their Google+ page.

The most popular videos on each page are as follows:

Canidae's Most popular recent video

This video from Canidae's YouTube channel showcases how their food and provides details about the company. This video has received 174,382 views, 8 likes, 2 dislikes, and 0 comments.

Petcurean's most popular recent video

This video from Petcurean's YouTube channel is a short advertisement for their dog food recipes. It is a very heartwarming look at "a boy and his dog". This engages viewers as it is very cute and fun. The video has received 111,521 views, 1 like and 0 dislikes. There are no comments on the video.

Overall, Petcurean definitely wins this round of the YouTube Challenge. They have very informative and engaging videos on their channel, a lot of subscribers, and over 2 million total views! These numbers blow Canidae out of the dog park!

The YouTube Challenge

Sharing Videos With the World

Mark Faber

Blue Buffalo's YouTube Channel

YouTube is a platform for sharing interesting and entertaining content in video format. Like Twitter and Facebook, Youtube is a great way for companies share content and get users engaged and developing brand loyalty through humorous or heartfelt videos. Blue Buffalo and IAMs both have YouTube channels for sharing this content with subscribers and the internet in whole. IAMs has 9,093 subscribers with 15.7 million views on their 97 videos, however they have not posted a new video in 7 months! Blue Buffalo has 696 subscribers and 1.4 million views on their 60 videos and posts new videos twice a week on average.

IAM's Top Video 

Blue Buffalo and IAMs past 10 videos have been focused heavily on promotional, often just their commercials reformatted to include more details or be slightly longer. However IAMs had previously (1 year + ago) been posting tips and informative videos if only they had continued that trend, rather than just reposting commercials! Blue Buffalo has very rarely (only twice) deviated from sharing their TV commercials on YouTube, this is very disappointing as Blue Buffalo was so good and active in their different social channels.

IAMs top video out of the past 10 posted is a lengthened TV commercial titled “A Boy and his Dog Duck”, it has 2.4 million views and 285 comments. It tugs on the heartstrings and showcases a boy and his dog growing up together and how IAMs has the different diets needed at all stages of the dog’s life. It really is quite adorable will probably make you smile for a half hour. Blue Buffalo’s top video, “Blue vs Purina Dog Chow” is a minute long commercial comparing the ingredients in puppy food with a pet owner. It has 1,173 views and the comments are disabled which is a poor choice for social media.

The one bright spot for Blue Buffalo’s YouTube channel over IAMs is the use of keywords, links to website and other social sites in the description of each video whereas IAMs has not taken full advantage of these SEO benefits.