Ollie's New Brand Platform Captures the Emotional Intensity of Dog Ownership

Fresh-grade dog food company Ollie has launched its new brand platform and largest national campaign to date.

"Feed the Obsession" features a series of video spots directed by Josefine Cardoni and created with creative agency nice&frank.

True to the campaign title, the hero film is set to Kylie Minogue's "Can't Get You Out of My Head."

It will air across streaming platforms, including Peacock, Paramount+, and Hulu, as well as broadcast networks including HGTV, Food Network, NBC, and ESPN.

The spots highlight specific, often unspoken behaviors that define devoted dog ownership, from custom-labeled food storage and post-meal mouth kisses to dog parent tattoos.

The campaign also marks Ollie's partnership with the Human Animal Bond Research Institute (HABRI), a non-profit focused on research and programming around dogs and their owners.

For a company competing in the premium pet food category, anchoring a platform in the emotional dog-parent bond gives Ollie a sharp and recognizable brand identity.

The 'Obsessed' Creative Strategy

Jaimie Gibriano, Senior Creative Director at Ollie, said the campaign marked a deliberate expansion of the brand's visual ambition:

"We introduced a new visual identity designed to match the bright, breakthrough energy dog parents feel towards their pup," she told DesignRush.

"We wanted the world to feel immersive and distinctly modern, while still grounded in the real and playful moments only dog parents recognize."

The campaign runs four video executions, including a 30-second hero spot, two 30- and 15-second versions titled "Healthy Boys" and "Mom Mode," and a 15-second spot titled "First Love."

Michael Stone, Director of Visual Narrative at nice&frank, also explained how the team treated the project as a world-building exercise from the start:

"On set, that meant capturing stills that felt less like advertising and more like artifacts of devotion," he told DesignRush.

"Visually, we balanced polish with personality, pairing a refined graphic language with captivating moments that feel real and unfiltered. The result is a brand world that's elevated, expressive and unmistakably Ollie."

Using a well-known pop song as the soundtrack of the campaign is also a deliberate brand recall trigger.

It gives the spots a built-in hook that works across long and short formats, while evoking nostalgia at a time when audiences have a taste for it.

Data Drives the Platform

Ollie commissioned a survey of 1,006 American dog parents to anchor the campaign in actual consumer behavior.

89% of respondents consider their dog their best friend, while 68% said they would trade five years of their own life to extend their dog's by the same amount.

The brand's operational numbers tell the same story:

• 220+ million meals served to date
• 5.5+ million boxes shipped
• 110,000+ health screenings

The numbers point to a widening market for premium, human-grade dog food, driven by younger pet parents who increasingly treat pets like family members.

In fact, a 2024 Harris Poll found that 43% of Americans, particularly Millennials and Gen Z, say they would choose having pets over having children.

This helps explain Ollie’s next move, with the brand now majority-owned by Agrolimen, a family-owned global food group that plans to expand its dog wellbeing services across the U.S.

First-party survey data is one of the most credible ways to justify a campaign's emotional premise, and Ollie's numbers here are specific enough to hold up to scrutiny.

"Feed the Obsession" is a useful case study in how to shift a category purchase into a lifestyle identity:

• Commission research first: Surveys give the campaign a factual foundation, making the emotional theme harder to dismiss as marketing flattery.
• Reflect the audience's existing behavior: Real habits close the gap between what the brand claims and what customers actually recognize about themselves.
• Use sonic branding to extend recall: A classic track tied to a campaign creates consistency without requiring visual repetition at every touchpoint.

The HABRI partnership adds another data layer, giving Ollie a research-backed claim on dog wellbeing that sits outside the brand's own marketing strategy.

Our Take: Does Lifestyle Positioning Work for Pet Food?

We think Ollie's instinct to move away from ingredient claims and toward identity is the right one for the premium pet food category.

The dog-as-family dynamic is real and well-documented, and the survey numbers give the campaign enough basis.

The Kylie Minogue track is also a smart choice.

It's familiar without being overused in advertising, and the earworm quality does real work across repeated exposures on streaming and broadcast.

Meanwhile, the HABRI partnership suggests Ollie is thinking longer-term, and that's where real brand equity gets built.

Pet and lifestyle brands building emotion-led platforms around consumer identity need agencies that understand how to balance sentiment with product credibility.

Explore the top advertising agencies in our directory.