I’ve had THAT SONG stuck in my head for three days.
“IS IT PET SMART?
OR PET’S MART?
ARE YOU SAYING THAT PETS ARE SMART?
OR – ARE YOU SAYING THEY’RE A MART FOR PETS?
I NEED ANSWERS!
WHICH ONE IS IT?!?!
AND IT CAN’T BE BOOOOOOOOOOOOOOTHHHHHHHH!!!!”
If you’ve been on Instagram or TikTok this week, you know the one – the guy in a PetSmart button-down screaming death metal into the camera.
I’ve been asking my wife Kim for the last three days: “Is it Pet Smart, or a mart of pets. Which one is it? It can’t be both.” At this point, the only debate in our house is whether she files under irreconcilable differences or temporary insanity.
That song – it reminds me of my ΣAE days at Duquesne. I can’t say anymore – sorry…Omertà.
Ben Lapidus – The Guy Behind the Pet Smart Song
His name is Ben Lapidus.
Ben is a musical comedian who appeared on America’s Got Talent performing a song about Parmesan cheese that made Simon Cowell go silent – which tells you everything you need to know about the kind of artist Ben Lapidus is.
He first posted the PetSmart question as a short TikTok clip back in 2021. It pulled over 550,000 likes and 14,500 comments.
PetSmart responded at the time with three words: “Pets are smart, punk.”
Dismissive.
Clever.
Case closed.
Except it wasn’t closed – because here we are, five years later, with a full music video pulling over two million views, a parking lot rally with celebrity guests, and the question louder than it’s ever been.
This past week, Ben released that full music video as the lead single from his debut album, Deeper and Dumber (out April 1).
In it, Ben shows up for a job interview at PetSmart, opens the welcome folder, sees the logo, and loses his mind. He points at the logo and breaks it down in real time: “Pet” is red and “Smart” is blue – so it reads Pet Smart, right?
But look closer at the bouncing ball between the words; it looks like an apostrophe – an apostrophe makes “Pet” possessive, which makes “Smart” into “Mart.”
A MART FOR PETS!
Security drags him out. The chorus keeps building. The internet, and I, loved it.
Then, on Sunday, March 8, Lapidus organized what he called a “Rally for the Truth” in the PetSmart parking lot in Sherman Oaks, California. He posted it on Partiful.
Ben told people to bring signs.
John Legend and Chrissy Teigen showed up – With their dogs.
Chrissy Teigen spoke to the crowd and addressed PetSmart’s CEO directly: “We will not give you one precious bite of kibble until we have answers!“
Which is funny – that is, until you remember that Legend and Teigen own a dog food company called Kismet.
This stunt allows the founders of a competing pet brand to occupy your parking lot, hijack your identity crisis, and insert their brand name into every headline about the event.”
Is that a celebrity cameo? Not really. It’s a competitor exploiting PetSmart’s brand vulnerability in real time in the PetSmart parking lot, while PetSmart’s mascot stands next to them for the photo.
And just like that, a comedian asking a goofy question about a pet store logo became the most interesting brand story in America this week.
You keep singing the song – don’t lie. It’s catchy; I know!
Here’s What Nobody Is Talking About
Every article I’ve read about this PetSmart branding faux pas treats it as entertainment – it’s a fun internet moment, a quirky debate. Remember? Is the dress blue or gold? “Yanny” or “Laurel?”
Pet Smart or Pets Mart.
But I’m a branding person, which means that I look at what’s happening here – and I don’t necessarily see debate.
Oh boy – and here comes the nerd in me – I see a case study in what happens when a company rebrands and doesn’t commit. I love case studies. Of course, I love case studies; I’m an INFJ. We can never get enough data.
Let me walk you through the history, because that’s where the whole thing falls apart.
PetSmart’s Three (3) Names in 19 Years
PetSmart started in 1986 as PetFood Warehouse.
PetFood Warehouse was exactly what it sounds like: a warehouse where you buy pet food in bulk at discount prices. Its founders – Jim and Janice Dougherty – opened the first two stores in Phoenix, Arizona. In 1989, Jim and Janice rebranded to PETsMART.
That is – Capital P, capital E, capital T, lowercase s, capital M, capital A, capital R, capital T.
With a capital “T“, and that rhymes with “P“, and that stands for pool! Oh, you got trouble, folks!
The “s” was intentionally the smallest letter in the logo. The visual design showed a bouncing ball hitting the “s” and launching it into the air.
The company meant the name to be read as ‘Pets Mart.
A mart for pets – a brand identity built around being a big-box retail destination (think of Costco, but for your cats and dogs). That worked for 16 years. Then in 2005, the company decided it didn’t want to be a mart for pets anymore; it wanted to be smart.
The pet industry was shifting at that time; people were starting to treat their dogs like children. That’s okay. We have five cats and a dog. I would be embarrassed if a camera caught me talking to my animals; people would ask, “Is he taking his Vyvanse?”
The concept of “pet parents” finally entered the mainstream. PetSmart saw an opportunity to reposition itself from a discount warehouse to a pet care expert. The company then offered its customers pet grooming, training, veterinary services, boarding, and adoption.
So PetSmart rebranded – again.
PETsMART became PetSmart. They split the logo into two colors: “Pet” in red, “Smart” in blue.
The brand standardized the lowercase ‘s‘ and shifted the bouncing ball’s position. This new design forces the eye to read the name as two words: Pet Smart.
But the pet store didn’t change its name. Nope, they didn’t. The letters on the building are still the same letters they were in 1989.
P-E-T-S-M-A-R-T.
No space.
No hyphen.
No apostrophe.
No visual break beyond a color shift that most people never consciously registered. They wanted a new identity without the discomfort of a new name.
And that, right there, is the branding failure.
But take heart: When times are tough, the PetSmart executives knew what we Marylanders have always known: at Eastern Motors, your Job is Your Credit.
Ford. Honda. Chevy. Beamers. And Minivans. Over 600 cars, trucks, SUVs; are you listening, man? Let Eastern put you in a car today. Eastern Motors will finance it – all the way. You can bet your last dollar that I have every word of that memorized. That’s right – I grew up in Hagerstown in the early 2000s.
A Rebrand That Requires Explanation Has Already Failed
Here’s the principle that every business owner, every marketing director, and every college kid with an opinion who has ever argued about a logo in a conference room needs to understand.
If you have to explain your brand, your brand isn’t working.
PetSmart invested in a rebrand in 2005. They hired designers. They split the colors. They shifted the positioning. They launched ad campaigns about “pet parents” and comprehensive care. They did everything right on paper.
Except for the one thing that mattered: PetSmart left the word unchanged.
PETSMART. Eight letters. No space.
And for 21 years, roughly half the country has read it one way, and the other half – they read it the other way. The company has never been able to fix this problem.
Why? Probably because the brand baked the ambiguity into the name itself. You cannot color-code your way out of a naming problem. A logo is not a decoder ring.
If the only way someone knows how to read your name correctly is by noticing that the first three letters are red and the last five are blue, you haven’t communicated your brand; unfortunately, you created a puzzle.
And people don’t buy from puzzles. People buy from clarity.
PetSmart’s 2005 rebrand was supposed to tell people this: we’re not a mart; We’re Smart.
Business schools teach PetSmart’s 2005 repositioning as a massive success. PetSmart’s pivot eventually led to an $8.7 billion buyout. The MBAs like me were celebrating PetSmart’s strategy – but I tend to believe that the company missed the linguistic failure playing out on the street.
They told people instead that their company isn’t confident enough in its new identity to give it a new name.
Why Ben Lapidus Struck a Nerve
A lot of people are asking why Ben Lapidus’s PetSmart song went so viral.
It’s a song about a pet store – a pet store whose name shouldn’t pull millions of views; it shouldn’t bring John Legend to a parking lot in Sherman Oaks on a Sunday afternoon.
But it did.
And the reason it did has nothing to do with pets and everything to do with something people feel but can’t always articulate.
People are tired of brands that won’t say what they mean.
Lapidus has joked in his videos that he’s demanding the truth from corporate overlords. He’s being funny. But look at the comment sections on his TikToks. You’ll find people who aren’t laughing. People are arriving with genuine frustration, authentically believing the company is trying to hide something.
People weren’t angry about a pet store logo. They were angry about the sense that someone was deliberately being unclear with them – that a corporation is playing both sides of an identity and hoping nobody notices.
That the answer to a simple question is somehow complicated, and the complication feels intentional.
That’s not a PetSmart problem.
What is it?
I believe it’s a trust problem.
And it’s the same trust problem that shows up in every industry where organizations say one thing and present another.
I’ve spent years watching organizations whose names say “care” but whose operations say “census.” Whose brochures say “dignity” but whose staffing ratios say “budget.” Whose logos say one thing and whose hallways say another.
The PetSmart debate is the lightest possible version of that disconnect. It’s the fun version – the version where the stakes are low. Let’s face it: the song is catchy. And John Legend brings his dog to a parking lot. Come on, man; that’s difficult to beat.
But the psychology is interesting, isn’t it?
When human beings can’t trust that a name means what it says, do you think we stop trusting the thing behind the name?
Something to ponder when stuck on the side of an interstate in late February.
We all know when we lost faith in an organization. We all have a story about a brand that broke our hearts and never found a way to repair the damage done.
What PetSmart Is Doing Right (and Wrong)
Credit where it’s due.
PetSmart’s social media team handled the initial response well. They used Lapidus’s own audio in a TikTok and said, “It’s Pet Smart, case closed. So no more screaming, you’re scaring the pets.“
That’s good instinct. Lean into the joke. Don’t issue a corporate statement when the internet is having fun.
Their SVP of Marketing, Bradley Breuer, told Newsweek that the company isn’t overly concerned about settling the debate and that its priority is ensuring pet parents have the resources they need. Mr. Breuer also confirmed that the bouncing ball in the logo “is just a bouncing ball, not an apostrophe.”
That’s solid crisis communication. Don’t fight the wave. Ride it.
But here’s what I believe PetSmart gets wrong: they’re treating this whole “thing” as a social media moment when it’s actually a 21-year-old strategic failure surfacing in public.
The reason this debate exists is not that the internet is silly. It’s because the 2005 rebrand didn’t finish the job.
You can’t tell me that a bouncing ball isn’t an apostrophe! PetSmart specifically designed the previous version to center the ‘s‘ as the focal point, ensuring we read the name as ‘Pets Mart‘.
The ball was the apostrophe. Come on, pEtSmArT.
For 16 years, from 1989 to 2005, the bouncing ball was literally the design element that made the name possessive. Then, in 2005, the company said, “Actually, it’s just a ball now,” and expected everyone to forget what it had once meant.
Oh, no; the internet doesn’t forget anything. The internet wasn’t being difficult, though. That’s just institutional memory being accurate.
And remember, this isn’t the first time PetSmart tried to close this case. In 2021, they responded to Lapidus’s original TikTok with “Pets are smart, punk.”
So no more screaming.
Same energy.
Same dismissal.
Same refusal to acknowledge that the confusion isn’t the public’s fault. Five years of saying “case closed” to a case that keeps reopening is not brand management.
That’s…denial?
The PetSmart Takeaway – A Deeper Lesson for Every Business
Here’s what I hope every business owner and marketing professional reading this takes from the PetSmart saga:
Your brand is not what you say it is.
Your brand is what people understand it to be.
And if there’s a gap between those two things, no amount of design work, social media responses, or celebrity parking-lot rallies will close it.
PetSmart wanted to be Pet Smart. But they kept the same eight letters.
They kept the same bouncing ball.
They kept the same sign on 1,650 buildings.
And they wondered why people still read it as Pets Mart.
If you want to be something new, you have to be willing to look new.
I believe you have to be willing to say the new thing clearly enough that nobody has to decode it. You have to be willing to let go of the old identity completely, not just color-code over it and hope people squint.
I finally figured it out: Forrest Gump’s running was really about him putting the past behind him. So he ran. And he kept running until he was tired. Then he went home.
“Mama always said, ‘You’ve got to put the past behind you before you can move on.'”
Does Your Business Have a PetSmart Problem?
Before you laugh this off as a pet store story, ask yourself these questions. Answer them honestly.
If a stranger looked at your logo, your website, and your name for ten seconds, would they know exactly what you do and who you do it for?
Or would they have to guess?
Is there a gap between what you call yourself and what your customers call you?
Because if there is, your customers might be on to something, yeah?
Have you ever rebranded, repositioned, or updated your messaging and kept the old name, tagline, or visual identity because changing it felt too risky?
If so, you didn’t rebrand. I’m sorry, but you redecorated.
Is there something about your business that you keep having to explain? Because if you’re explaining, you’re already losing.
Clarity isn’t a luxury. It’s the entire job of a brand.
And if a comedian can build a movement around the fact that your name is confusing, the name is the problem, not the comedian.
PetSmart had 21 years to fix this. That’s one too many years for Phil Leotardo.
Do you believe PetSmart fixed its branding challenges? Or did PetSmart choose comfort over clarity?
Either way – it’s March 2026, and a guy with a death-metal growl and a parking-lot rally just became the most effective brand consultant in America.
Maybe don’t let a comedian handle your marketing if you want to keep things in-house?
WHAT ONE IS IT?
IT CAN’T BE BOTH!
Hi, I’m Ryan Miner. I write about human beings experiencing life, small-business marketing, artificial intelligence, healthcare, behavioral psychology, branding, marketing, and what actually makes businesses work. I founded Sentinel Silver and The Senior Soup. Email me at Ryan@RyanRMiner.com; text or call me at (240) 244-7075.
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