Ad sucks, but product is cool

Woof.

A good idea with terrible marketing showed up on my Facebook page as an uninvited sponsored advertisement.

The product is called Voyce. On Facebook, the ad made it appear that Voyce was a collar you put on your dog in order to get to know your dog better. The collar transmits, via WIFI, your dog’s vital signs to your computer. From there, the ad said you’d get a better idea of your dog’s moods, such as whether the dog was happy or sad.

Pshaw, I thought. This sounded to me like a gadget for people who are tone deaf when it comes to dogs and probably other animals, too. Kind of a gadget for the instinct-deprived among us.

My immediate thought on reading the ad was that people who need a computer to tell them what mood their dog is in probably shouldn’t have a dog. Worse – those who would buy such a gadget probably aren’t spending enough time with their dog and are looking to Voyce to be their quality time substitute.

But when I punched Voyce into Google, I changed my mind.

Facebook ad aside, Voyce (

www.mydogsvoyce.com) is a clever, if costly, idea that was one of the darlings of the just-ended Consumer Electronics Show. This is a case where the product’s marketing is doing the product a disservice.

According to the website, putting a waterproof Voyce collar on your dog will, among other things, collect data on your puppy’s activity and rest levels, calories burned, heart rate and respiratory rate. Who needs all this information? Dog owners probably do, if they want to pay $299 for the collar and another $15/month for updates.

What good does all this data do? It could predict a heart attack, for one thing. You can download the data, store it and compare last week’s results with current results. Over time, you could actually learn something that even those with the best animal instincts can’t know.

(Voyce isn’t the only such device out there. There’s PetPace, Cleo, Whistle and Tagg, all at varying costs and all operating with the same idea. You can check them out on Google.)

If you’re looking for a way to justify the cost of Voyce or any of its aforementioned competitors, try this: The price of the collar alone is probably close to the cost of a visit to the veterinarian. Data printout in hand, you might be able to avoid the exorbitant costs of a vet running tests. I don’t know about you, but I’ve spent enough money with our local vet to build a new wing on his office.

If I were in charge of  i4C Innovations, the company behind Voyce, I’d think about bringing the price down and make it up in volume. I’d also lose the company that wrote the ad on Facebook. Other than that, this is a product very much worth considering.

Philip and his wife, Suzy, have two dogs and two cats, all rescue animals. Pictured: Stella, who is about to jump on Bella.