Spot & Tango is making a $3.5M bet on brand marketing after years of spending $0

Digital Marketing Redux // September 23, 2026 Spot & Tango is making a $3. 5M bet on brand marketing after years of spending $0 By Julia Waldow Spot & Tango New Yorkers are well-acquainted with hot dogs. But this month, they’ll see some cartoonishly long dogs, too, thanks to marketing materials from Spot & Tango.

The digitally native pet food brand, which sells fresh food and treats, has a new ad campaign built around the message, “Extend your dog’s life.” It has installed illustrations of very long dogs in more than 570 subway cars, with additional text that reads, “More nutrition. More dog.”

Created in conjunction with the agency Day Job, the campaign is a nod to Spot & Tango’s ingredients — but it’s also emblematic of a new marketing strategy for the DTC brand. This year, Spot & Tango is funneling $3. 5 million into top-of-funnel marketing, an effort that spans from out-of-home ads to connected TV to events.

It’s a notable shift from last year, when the brand spent effectively $0 on top-of-funnel marketing. Spot & Tango has long invested in bottom-of-funnel marketing on channels like Meta, Google and TikTok, and it will continue to do so.

But the brand is also hoping to build more awareness as it looks to create more in-house labels, court more pet parents and gear up for its 10th anniversary in 2028. Spot & Tango launched in 2018 and primarily operates on a subscription basis. Its leaders come from a “performance marketing DNA,” co-founder Dylan Munro said.

With performance marketing, he said, “You know exactly where the dollars are going. You know exactly what revenue it’s driving. It’s amazing, but there comes a point in your business where you need to be educating more broadly [within] the consumer base. Performance marketing can only take you so far.”

Spot & Tango, which is known for its shelf-stable food Unkibble, is used to battling legacy pet-food players like Purina and Blue Buffalo for market share. Today, its products are available in the U. S. and Canada. “A lot of folks have heard of us, but not everyone,” co-founder Russell Breuer said.

“The market’s very big, so we see these [upper-funnel initiatives] as opportunities to further amplify what we’re doing.” This new marketing strategy comes at a time of growth for Spot & Tango. The company, which owns its own manufacturing facility in Pennsylvania, is profitable and up more than 70% year over year.

It also has a $200 million annualized revenue run rate. Some of that comes from its in-house dental-chew brand, PupGum, which launched last year and exceeded $10 million in annual recurring revenue in seven months.

Since focusing on top-of-funnel marketing this year, the entire Spot & Tango portfolio has brought on “hundreds of thousands of new customers,” Munro said. The company is now looking to spend anywhere from $5 million to $7 million on top-of-funnel marketing next year. Spot & Tango’s recent marketing blitz spans various channels and markets.

In addition to its subway ads, the brand installed billboards in New York City along the West Side Highway. It also experimented with linear TV and connected TV spots during sporting events, news broadcasts and other content. Ads during basketball games have proven particularly effective, Breuer said, but sports in general are doing well.

“It’s a captive audience,” he said. “You’re going to be engaged.” Events have become a key part of Spot & Tango’s strategy, too. Earlier this year, PupGum held a “worst dog breath” contest, judged by a “dog-breath sniffer” and a “dog kisser,” each of whom were paid $1,000 an hour. (The winner was a 12-year-old Chihuahua named Willie.)

PupGum saw a 34% week-over-week increase in visitors to its website on the day of the contest, and the event was written up by Gothamist, NBC and Vice. Earlier this summer, Spot & Tango and PupGum held a digital dog portrait contest on Instagram.

View this post on Instagram Greg Carlucci, senior director analyst at Gartner, told Modern Retail he’s seeing more brands invest more in top-of-funnel marketing as they try to stay top of mind with consumers. Gartner’s 2026 CMO Spend Survey found that CMOs were allocating 30. 5% of their marketing budgets to “brand awareness,” up 1.

5 percentage points from the year before. It’s also now easier, and less expensive, for brands to try out channels like CTV, Carlucci pointed out. “Historically, to do a linear TV campaign, it couldn’t be targeted, or it [required] a large minimum spend that prohibited smaller or mid-sized brands from participating, which has since changed,” he said.

“You’re starting to see more brands