Dog Jobs, Whale Rights and Making Space for What Matters

A leading pet lifestyle company - the same one behind chew toy subscription boxes and luxury pet flights (think Delta for Dachshunds) - recently announced they were hiring a dog. Not a mascot. Not a social media 'intern.' A real, live, tail-wagging canine.

The position, called 'Chairdog,' is part of a new campaign titled Co-Owned by Dogs. The job posting includes everything you might expect from an executive-level role: advising the CEO, participating in quarterly leadership meetings (via a pet psychic, naturally), overseeing a charitable donation, and earning a $50,000 salary. Plus, perks, which presumably include belly rubs, long walks around the block, and unfettered access to the mailman.

The Chairdog - once hired - will also lead a 'Dog Committee,' composed of subscriber pets who will weigh in on toy design and social impact strategy.

Delightfully deranged as it may seem, the Chairdog campaign isn’t just a cutesy PR stunt. It’s a serious flex in the world of brand strategy - and an effective case study in how modern marketing is morphing into something weirder, more participatory, and more emotionally resonant than ever.

The company isn’t just selling beef-flavoured treats or airline seats for pugs. They’re telling a story - and not just any story, but one that invites you in. This is what we in the biz call narrative transportation: when we get swept up in a story so fully that we feel emotionally, and even psychologically, inside it. And once we’re in, we start to align ourselves with its values, its logic.

By casting a dog in the role of decision-maker, the company doesn’t just wink at the audience - it hands us a role in the play. It says: your dog matters so much, we’ve given him a vote. It says: you’re not a consumer, you’re a co-conspirator. And in a world where brands talk a lot about 'authenticity' but mostly serve up beige platitudes, that kind of imaginative leap feels… oddly sincere.

What’s more, it reflects something we already want to believe about ourselves.

Enter identity-based consumption, the part of consumer psychology that explains why we buy stuff not just because it’s useful, but because it reinforces who we think we are. I’m not just a person who gives my dog treats. No, I’m the kind of person who lets my dog run the show.

In other words, we’re not just buying products - we’re buying into stories that affirm who we are (or at least who we’d like to be). And once you see that, you start to notice it everywhere - not just in dog boardrooms, but in actual courtrooms.

Indeed, we’ve seen something like this before, too. Because the impulse to grant emotional weight to whatever it is we care about, isn’t relegated to fiction or feelings. It shows up in real life, and the ways we stretch our systems to make space for what matters.

Not long ago, Indigenous leaders in New Zealand, Tahiti, and the Cook Islands signed a treaty that declared whales legal persons. These weren’t marketing folks - these were cultural stewards giving voice to generations of belief that whales are ancestral, sacred, and necessary. The treaty isn’t metaphorical. It’s legal. Whales, in this framework, can be represented in court. They have rights. They matter.

While one company was asking people to nominate their golden retriever for 9-5 life, the Pacific Ocean was hosting a conversation about sovereignty, stewardship, and ecological personhood. And while one effort is certainly more existentially urgent, they’re both doing something similar: giving animals a role in systems built by - and usually only for - humans.

And then there’s the pet food conglomerate, which recently found itself needing to understand cats. They could have just called me, bona fide cat expert extraordinaire. Instead, the company launched an internal initiative called Cattitude to help its (mostly dog-loving) team get inside the heads of feline companions. They met with cat families. They consulted cat behaviourists. They asked very serious questions like, “Does this campaign feel emotionally valid to a cat parent?”

It turns out cat owners don’t want to be told their cats are aloof. They want to be seen as people in meaningful, if emotionally unbalanced, relationships. Like someone whose cat might ignore them for three days (mine would never), then choose to sleep on their head the fourth - and that’s love.

These examples - dog-as-board-member, whale-as-legal-being, cat-as-creative director - all speak to a trend that goes beyond animals. They’re about us. About how we want to feel seen. About how we want the things we love (and feed little bites of our food to and talk to in baby voices) to be taken seriously - by brands, by systems, by someone.

And in a time when most human systems feel untouchable or vaguely rigged, it’s kind of a relief to imagine a dog with influence. Or a cat with a casting vote. Or a whale with rights.

The Chairdog campaign doesn’t try to sound like it’s saving the world. It’s not promising innovation or disruption or pet-parenting solutions. It’s saying something quieter: we see how much your pet means to you - and we’re willing to make that real. Not real in the legal sense. Not like the whale treaty. But real enough to feel like the emotional math checks out.

Because that’s what most of this is about. Not sales funnels. Not squeaky toys. But storytelling. And more specifically, storytelling that lets people see themselves as more than just buyers. As co-authors. As participants. As the kind of person whose dog should be in charge of quarterly donations.

Yes, it’s ridiculous. And yes, that’s the point.

Because in a world that often feels numb, the brands that connect aren’t always the ones that say the smartest thing. Sometimes they’re the ones that say the sweetest. Or the strangest. Or the most spectacularly unhinged.

None of us actually thinks a dog is going to change the future of corporate governance. But we do believe we’re better off with someone - anyone - reminding us that tenderness counts. That storytelling still works. And that sometimes, the best way to build a brand is to let the dog run the meeting.