How Boo the Dog Built the Pet-Influencer Template
Boo was not the first famous animal on the internet, and he was not the first one with a book. Mr. Winkle had Random House books and calendars in 2001. A cat named Sockington had 1.5 million Twitter followers before most people had heard of Boo. Maru, the cat in the boxes, had a book out in Japan in 2009 and a cat-litter commercial in 2010, and Keyboard Cat sold pistachios on television the same year.
What Boo did, between October 2010 and the summer of 2012, was put all of it together in one dog, on a social network, in the dog’s own voice, at a scale no pet had reached: a major publisher, a licensed plush line from a major toy maker, a corporate job title, and an audience that would pass 16 million. That combination is what “pet influencer” means now, and Boo has the strongest claim to being the first of them. This page makes that case honestly, earlier pets included.
Before Boo: famous pets, and what they sold
The internet had celebrity pets before it had influencers, and each of them had a piece of the kit.
Mr. Winkle, a tiny rescue from Bakersfield, became a web phenomenon around 2000 through his owner’s photographs, and Random House published What Is Mr. Winkle? in 2001, followed by more books, calendars, and cards. He was a publishing property with a website, not a social-media account, because there was no social media yet.
Sockington, a gray cat in Massachusetts, started tweeting in late 2007, in first person, and passed 1.5 million followers by May 2010. His owner, the archivist Jason Scott, sold some T-shirts, ran charity drives, and announced in 2009 that the cat would not endorse products or sell out. Maru had been one of YouTube’s most-watched cats since his cardboard-box video in October 2008; a Japanese book followed in 2009 and a Fresh Step commercial in 2010, with an owner who stayed pseudonymous and let the box do the work. Keyboard Cat, a 1984 home video turned 2009 meme, got a manager and a national pistachio ad in 2010.
Books, merchandise, an ad, a first-person voice, an invisible owner: all of it existed. Nobody had yet put the whole set behind one face on a social platform.
October 2010: the month it changed
Boo’s owner, a Facebook employee in San Francisco, had made him a page in 2009 with a three-sentence bio: “My name is Boo. I am a dog. Life is good.” In October 2010 the singer Kesha tweeted that she had a new boyfriend and linked to the page; the same month, Khloé Kardashian posted his picture on her blog. Within a year the page was past a million fans, and it kept climbing for the rest of his life.
Here is the detail that gets lost: Instagram launched on October 6, 2010, the same month. The platform that would host the pet-influencer economy was days old when Boo’s page took off. He did it on Facebook.
What made the photos work is on the bio page and the haircut page: a dog who, because of a short rounded coat, photographed exactly the same from every angle. Reliable cuteness turned out to be the raw material of a brand.
2011 to 2012: the kit gets assembled
August 2011. Chronicle Books, having noticed a page with more than a million fans, publishes Boo: The Life of the World’s Cutest Dog under the pen name J.H. Lee. Good Morning America runs a gallery in September; the book eventually comes out in ten languages.
Early 2012. Gund’s licensed Boo plush goes on pre-order in January and ships in March. The line eventually runs past thirty designs. (The whole line is on the plush page.)
April 2012. A death hoax, #RIPBOO, spreads so fast that his publisher has to confirm he is alive.
July 2012. Virgin America names Boo its “Official Pet Liaison,” photographing him on a plane next to advice for flying with pets. An airline’s announcement, with a job title for a dog.
2012 and after. A second book, Boo: Little Dog in the Big City, then an alphabet book in 2013. Calendars. Sunglasses modeled for an eyewear brand. Birthdays became charity drives: Operation Smile for his fifth, a charity: water campaign for his seventh that raised more than thirty thousand dollars.
By the end of 2012 the whole kit was in place around one dog: a page in his voice, a publisher, licensed merchandise, a brand ambassador deal, cause marketing. The owner stayed pseudonymous and out of the frame. The pet was the talent.
What Boo combined
None of the four parts was new on its own. The combination was.
- A face that photographed the same every time. The haircut gave Boo a fixed, recognizable look, which is what a brand needs. Grumpy Cat had the frown; Jiffpom has the same cut.
- A social page in the dog’s voice. Sockington did this on Twitter first. Boo did it on Facebook, where the audience was ten times larger, and the page itself became the product people followed.
- A licensed plush from a major toy maker, while the fame was fresh. Not T-shirts, not a calendar: a Gund line that is still sold new fourteen years later.
- A corporate title. Virgin America did not buy an ad with Boo in it; it made him staff. That is the brand-partnership model every pet account pitches today.
2012 to 2015: the industry arrives
Grumpy Cat went viral on Reddit in September 2012, two months after Boo’s airline announcement, and her career followed the same pattern at a bigger scale: a manager (the same one who represented Keyboard Cat), a Chronicle Books title in 2013, Gund plush, a spokescat deal with Friskies, and a Lifetime movie.
Then Instagram did what Facebook pages could not: it made every dog a potential Boo. Manny the Frenchie and Tuna built followings in 2011 and 2012; Menswear Dog went viral on Tumblr in 2013 in Ralph Lauren; Marnie, adopted from a shelter in 2012, became a star in 2014; and Jiffpom, a Pomeranian who wears Boo’s haircut, appeared in a Katy Perry video in 2014 and became the most-followed dog on Instagram. In 2013 a New York lawyer named Loni Edwards started an account for her own dog, and in 2015 she founded The Dog Agency, one of the first talent agencies for animal influencers, because the owners of popular pets needed someone to handle the brand deals.
Where it went, and where he went
By the time Boo died in January 2019, pet influencers were a line item in marketing budgets and the most-followed dogs had audiences in the millions. The news of his death ran on CNN, the BBC, and Time, which is its own kind of proof: the pet that built the template got an obituary.
The rest of the famous dogs of the internet are on the pillar page, and what happened to Boo is told in full on the memorial page. Life, as the bio said, was good.
Frequently Asked Questions
Who was the first pet influencer?
Boo, the Pomeranian known as the World’s Cutest Dog, has the strongest claim. Famous pets came before him (Mr. Winkle in 2001, Sockington on Twitter, Maru on YouTube, Keyboard Cat), and some had books or ads, but Boo was the first to combine the whole kit on a social network: a page in his own voice, a major publisher, a licensed Gund plush line, and a corporate title, all between 2010 and 2012.
When did pet influencers start?
The template came together between October 2010, when Boo’s Facebook page went viral, and July 2012, when Virgin America made him its Official Pet Liaison. Grumpy Cat (2012) and the Instagram dogs (2012 to 2014) scaled it, and The Dog Agency, one of the first talent agencies for animal influencers, was founded in 2015.
Was Boo the first famous dog on the internet?
No. Mr. Winkle was an internet-famous dog with Random House books in 2001, and several cats were famous online before Boo. Boo was the first pet to be built into a brand on a social network, which is what “influencer” means.