How Vivaldi Helped the American Kennel Club Build Brand Relevance With New Dog Owner Segments

Media & Entertainment

The Challenge

The American Kennel Club's core audience — purebred dog enthusiasts and show competitors — represented a deep but narrowing base. As dog ownership grew rapidly among younger generations drawn more to rescue and mixed-breed dogs than traditional purebred culture, the AKC risked losing relevance with the mainstream pet-owning population. The organization needed to understand how to extend its brand appeal to new segments without compromising its credibility with its traditional community.

The Opportunity

Vivaldi conducted a comprehensive brand growth and customer relevance study combining quantitative brand tracking across the dog-owning population with qualitative research to understand the attitudes, motivations, and information needs of new and emerging dog owner segments. The research was designed to identify where the AKC's brand resonated, where gaps existed, and what strategic investments could broaden its relevance.

The Outcome

The American Kennel Club received a detailed picture of its brand equity across new customer segments — with strategic insights into how to strengthen relevance with modern dog owners. The research and strategic recommendations gave the AKC a clear direction for broadening its appeal and driving brand growth beyond its traditional purebred community.

American Kennel Club Case Study Summary

The American Kennel Club engaged Vivaldi to address a narrowing base of purebred enthusiasts and identify how the brand could connect with younger owners who skew toward rescue and mixed-breed dogs. Vivaldi combined quantitative brand tracking across the dog-owning population with qualitative work on emerging segments, producing a clear picture of brand equity gaps and a strategic direction for broadening relevance without alienating the AKC’s traditional community.

About American Kennel Club

The American Kennel Club (AKC) is America’s oldest and most prestigious purebred dog registry, founded in 1884 and headquartered in New York City. The AKC promotes the sport of purebred dogs and advances canine health and well-being through events, education, breeder standards, and advocacy. With 197 recognized breeds and an extensive network of affiliated clubs, the AKC serves breeders, exhibitors, trainers, and dog owners — but has faced the challenge of remaining relevant as dog ownership demographics and attitudes toward breed, adoption, and pet culture evolve.

Frequently Asked Questions

What did Vivaldi help the American Kennel Club achieve with the brand relevance study

Vivaldi gave the AKC a measured view of where its brand equity held up across new dog owner segments and where it eroded against modern pet culture, then translated those findings into strategic moves the organization could make to broaden appeal. The output was a direction for growth that did not require the AKC to abandon the purebred community that funds and legitimizes the organization.

How did Vivaldi combine quantitative tracking with qualitative research on new dog owners?

The quantitative tracking measured brand awareness, associations, and consideration across the full US dog-owning population, which set the size and direction of the relevance problem. The qualitative work then went into the motivations, information needs, and emotional drivers of rescue-first and mixed-breed owners, which is where the strategic recommendations actually came from because shifts in attitude show up before they show up in tracking numbers.

Why is brand relevance a structural challenge for legacy membership and registry organizations?

Registries and breed-standard bodies are built around a defined community of enthusiasts, and the rituals, language, and credentials that bind that community are precisely what feel exclusionary to newcomers. The category challenge is that broadening the audience tends to dilute the signals that the core community pays for, so any growth strategy has to be designed to extend reach in adjacent territory rather than by softening the core proposition.

What can other heritage organizations take from the American Kennel Club's approach?

The transferable lesson is that you cannot diagnose a relevance problem from inside the existing membership base, because the people you are losing are the ones not showing up in your surveys, your events, or your registration data. A growth strategy for a heritage brand has to begin with primary research on the segments that have never engaged, and the output should be a portfolio of moves at the edges of the brand rather than a repositioning of the core.