• by Richard Whitman , Columnist, April 6, 2016

Yup. Just when you think you've been around long enough to proudly proclaim "I've seen it all," some newfangled thing pops up. Today, that newfangled thing is The Dog Agency. No, it's not an agency run by Internet famous dogs. It's an agency run by Loni Edwards, whose dog, Chloe, has 125,000 followers on Instagram.

Edwards aims to represent Instagram dog accounts with 200,000 or so followers garnering them about $3,000 per sponsored post.

One of Edwards', clients, The Dogist, is run by Elias Weiss Friedman, a New York-based photographer who, yes, takes pictures of dogs and posts them to The Dogist Instagram account which currently has 1.9 million followers. 

On behalf of Friedman, Edwards has negotiated deals with Google and Merck and is working on deals with Nikon and Equinox.

According to the Web site, "The Dog Agency is here to strategically connect the dots between and among dog influencers, their adoring fans, and the brands who need them."

Which, of course, makes perfect sense. After all, we have leveraged human social media influencers for years. Why not dogs, too? 

Of the benefits of a brand using a dog influencer in their campaigns versus a human influencer, Edwards said, “With dogs, you’re reaching men, women, kids, grandparents. They just have this wide appeal.” More importantly, she noted the dogs -- because dogs are dogs and not human -- do not distinguish between sponsored content and regular content when performing for a video making it, perhaps, the most natural and unbiased form or marketing.

So yeah, hire a dog to do your marketing.