A year in dog politics
It's almost a year since Pedigree Dogs Exposed invaded five million living rooms and made lots of people angry and sad.
It was a wake up call and some things have changed and after the big reviews into breeding hopefully much more will happen.
But by the looks of it Crufts is becoming a little less toxic from a marketing perspective.
True, it's lost its meaty sponsor Pedigree (although they do all claim this was just a coincidence) and instead they have secured the somewhat unlikely discount-sofa-manufacturers-with-the-extensive-credit-terms-and-annoying-adverts DFS.
And it looks like we all need to learn to say 'DFS Crufts' in future, which doesn't scan well and makes me whistle slightly as I say it - which probably upsets lots of collies.
Makes it sound a bit like a ship, too. But I guess they are paying to be an 'above the title' sponsor. (HMS Titanic, DFS Crufts, HMS Spirit of Free Credit?)
And no longer the luxury of luscious BBC2 big-budget outside broadcast coverage with the lovely Ben Fogle and Claire, instead it'll be the guys who filmed it for the Internet last year and it'll be shown on channel who-knows-what More4.
Will the coverage be so sickeningly positive that we'll all need to hide behind our non-DFS sofas? Will they try to make it business as usual as if this last year never actually happened? (A bit like Dallas where Bobby wakes up and it was all just a bad dream?)
We all missed the good stuff - the dancing dogs, the agility all the positive stuff - but I didn't miss the phoney reportage that looked at the show world though very unhelpful rose-tinted spectacles.
2010 DFS Crufts, god bless all who sit on her.
It was a wake up call and some things have changed and after the big reviews into breeding hopefully much more will happen.
But by the looks of it Crufts is becoming a little less toxic from a marketing perspective.
True, it's lost its meaty sponsor Pedigree (although they do all claim this was just a coincidence) and instead they have secured the somewhat unlikely discount-sofa-manufacturers-with-the-extensive-credit-terms-and-annoying-adverts DFS.
And it looks like we all need to learn to say 'DFS Crufts' in future, which doesn't scan well and makes me whistle slightly as I say it - which probably upsets lots of collies.
Makes it sound a bit like a ship, too. But I guess they are paying to be an 'above the title' sponsor. (HMS Titanic, DFS Crufts, HMS Spirit of Free Credit?)
And no longer the luxury of luscious BBC2 big-budget outside broadcast coverage with the lovely Ben Fogle and Claire, instead it'll be the guys who filmed it for the Internet last year and it'll be shown on channel who-knows-what More4.
Will the coverage be so sickeningly positive that we'll all need to hide behind our non-DFS sofas? Will they try to make it business as usual as if this last year never actually happened? (A bit like Dallas where Bobby wakes up and it was all just a bad dream?)
We all missed the good stuff - the dancing dogs, the agility all the positive stuff - but I didn't miss the phoney reportage that looked at the show world though very unhelpful rose-tinted spectacles.
2010 DFS Crufts, god bless all who sit on her.
Comments
Philippa
I don't think anyone but you will be referring to it as DFS Crufts, just as no one used to say Pedigree Crufts.
http://www.crufts.org.uk/news/more-4-broadcast-crufts
"More 4 has signed a deal with the Kennel Club, organiser of DFS Crufts, to broadcast the event for the first time in 2010."
To be honest I have never seen the Kennel club call it Pedigree Crufts - hence me highlighting it!