Vet Medz

Last night on my way home from work I picked up a copy of one of the free papers used by commuters all over London to quicken their journey and distract themselves from the 20-60 minutes that they spend each day squashed insanely close to strangers’ armpits.

Somewhere between the latest on the economic down turn and an interesting piece on Lindsay Lohan’s mismatching tanned legs and pale feet was a curious little article that got me thinking about my latest conference – Companion Animal Products.

The ‘phenomenon’ on the web of icanhascheezburger.com is a site less than two years' old that was sold for an estimated $2m nine months ago. It gets more than two million hits a day and has been named the 8th most powerful blog by The Observer. The website contains pictures of people’s cats and funny captions, 10,000 people submit their efforts daily with only nine or ten making the cut.



These jokes have developed their very own subculture, constantly referring back to earlier musings. It has its own language - a cross between baby language and text speak known as “lolspeak” - with very strict rules and its own wiki conversion site, reoccurring characters and even its own mythology.

Believe it or not, visitors to the site recently attended a huge convention at the O2 arena. Many admitted to stalking their cat with a camera and not being able to look at their pet without thinking of captions in the now cult language of lolspeak.

Icanhascheezburger.com is just one example of the increasing devotion of people to their pets but it reflects the growing opportunities for product development in this area and is the main reason for the growth that we have seen in the companion animal products industry.

This years’ Companion Animal Products conference, Prague, 26-27 November 2009, has been designed show you how to spot the best opportunities for your product portfolio and predict your competitor’s pipeline. Attendees will benefit from leading market analysis, recent product launch industry feedback and the latest developments to address the unmet needs in the companion animal product market. www.animalpharmevents.com/summit



Obviously you need to come to the conference to get this expert market intelligence and industry researched information from our experienced speaker panel but for the time being I hope that you enjoy this insight into a large section of your target market’s psyche....

http://www.icanhascheezburger.com/