hello. a very warm welcome to talking business weekly with me, aaron heslehurst. let's go and take a look at what's on the show. this is wednesday, she's my three—year—old german shepherd cross. i've had herfor about two and a half years, since the middle of the pandemic, and i spend about £250 a month average on her, which is about 17% of my salary. yep, the global pet industry. it has been booming as more and more of us spend big, pampering our pooches and caring for our cats. a surge in ownership during the pandemic has changed how we treat our furry friends, ushering in a new era of humanising our animals, with social media leading the pack. and it's an industry set to be worth half a trillion dollars by the end of the decade. so i'm going to be discussing all of that with these two. there they are, the head of an agency representing social

media animal celebrities — yeah, you heard me right — and the boss of the world's biggest online pet sitting marketplace. plus, "your call is important to us. "please hold the line." yep, i'm going to be catching up with the president of the customer service tech giant salesforce about their latest ai chatbots looking to take the strain. wherever you'rejoining me from around the world, once again, a big hello and a warm welcome to the show. you know, during the pandemic lockdowns, more and more of us looked to pets for companionship and comfort, certainly spurring a huge surge in pet ownership in many countries around the world. and that surge created vast new opportunities for businesses that support our

pets, from vet services to rubber toys. the increasing demand has seen the amount we spend on pets follow suit. the uptick in ownership, it's come with a change in the way we treat our animals, with the phenomenon known as humanising. yeah, that's treating our animals more like we'd like to be treated ourselves, changing what we buy for our pets with the trends like the move away from dry to fresh human—grade foods to cutting—edge pet health care, all the way to kitting out our animals with the latest top name designer accessories, and all of that driving something of an absolute boom for the pet industry. let me show you some of the numbers. globally, it was valued at around $320 billion last year, and as i've mentioned, it's projected to grow to around half a trillion dollars by the end of the decade, and all spurred byjumps in pet ownership, which we saw to the extreme in places like right here in the uk,

where the number of households with pets jumped during the pandemic by around 20%, and places like australia, where there was an 8% jump. the world's largest market, the united states, it saw pet ownership levels hit a 30—year high during the pandemic, which have since stabilised. but the amount of money the americans are spending on their animals is still on the up, climbing from under $100 billion pre—pandemic to nearly 150 billion bucks last year. so what's all this money being spent on? well, full disclosure here, cos i've got skin in the game as a pet owner myself. take a look. 0k. meet hank and margo, our eight—year—old ragdoll cats, brother and sister. it took my wife a year and a half to convince me to get a cat, so when i caved in, i decided, well, two is better than one. we got them when they were three months old. paid just over £2,000 for both.

but, boy, the costs don't stop there. from the copious amount of toys to their scandinavian beds, the fancy scratch posts, the insurance and the vet bills literally adds up to thousands of pounds. but i tell you what, we adore them. they're a huge part of our lives and i'm lucky to be holding both of them together. they're our family. so there you go, hank and margo. but let's now hear from some other pet lovers and how they're getting along. hi, i'm richard, this is gunther and this is ada. we've had guntherfor about ten years, and we've had ada for about eight. they mean the world to us. we absolutely love them. but they do get away with murder. we spend about £175 a month on their upkeep, which is around about 14% of the wage. hi, i'm keira and this is polly. i've had her for about three years now. i would say our bond is quite strong. she's my little partner in crime.

i would spend around 80% of my money on her and my three other guinea pigs. well, there you go. and as you can see, the latest drivers behind the numbers are from the younger generation, with those under 35 driving the market, with the internet a large source of inspiration. you only have to jump on social media and you can see just how much cute content is out there, drawing billions of clicks and millions of followers. pets with their own loyal fans, they're pet influencers, and they're shaping people's buying habits and becoming businesses in their own right. and spotting the huge potential of this burgeoning market is my first guest. she's the big boss of the dog agency and the founder of petcon, loni edwards, and, of course, kayso. thank you both for joining me on the show. and, loni, let me start with this, quite simply, explain to us what it is you do. how did you get started? because it's a really fascinating story. yeah, so i run the dog agency.

it is the first talent management agency to focus on the pet influencer space. i fell into this world. my background was in law. i went to harvard law school, worked at a large law firm. then ijumped into the fashion space. and while running that company, i got a dog. her name was chloe. and this was back in 2013, and she quickly became one of the first—ever pet influencers. i didn't know what a pet influencer was, i was just sharing photos online with friends and family, and she started amassing this large following. brands started reaching out to work with her. we were getting packages from brands, we were being invited to events, and that's when i discovered this new emerging pet influencer world. and i was meeting other people that, just like me, fell into this new world. and when they found out i was a lawyer, they asked me for advice. they were like, "oh, i got this contract. "can you look at this? "can you help me?" so i was unofficially kind of setting up this agency in 2013, 2014, then 2015, decided to officially start the first talent agency for pet influencers.

so i have to ask you, how popular are these people's pets? and, importantly, how does that translate into a money—generating business? this industry generates a lot of money. these pet influencers are little businesses. each one of them is an independent little business. they have multiple revenue streams. they have the partnerships they're doing with brands that are your traditional influencer work, where they're working with the brand, they're creating content, they're posting it on social media. if you're a bigger influencer with a large following, very engaged audience, you can be getting five figures per instagram post and those add up. you do a lot of posts a year and that's just one piece of your revenue stream. we also have clients that have new york times best selling books. they have merchandise, they have product lines, they do appearances. so the revenue streams are truly endless. they started with instagram and social media collaborations, but they've truly expanded beyond that to be true businesses that have limitless potential of earnings. and, loni, you also started

and you run petcon. now, to the uninitiated, i'm assuming that's like a comic con, right? but it's all about the pet world. what kind of companies are getting involved in petcon? yeah, so that's exactly right. it is like a comic con, but for pets. so, two years after starting the dog agency, i realised that there was no events like this that brought this whole world offline, people wanted to meet the influencers. so we have everything from meet and greets with the celebrity pet speaker sessions, brand activations, the brands that have participated at petcon doing activations, everything from entertainment companies like 20th century fox, sony, to cleaning products like dyson, food companies, human food brands, pet food brands, pet products. it truly covers all verticals because people love their pets, and they want to see that their brands that they like also have that connection to pets,

so brands in all verticals, human—facing, pet—facing verticals, have showcased and done activations at petcon. there does seem to be a change in the way people are treating their pets. so, loni, i'm kind of wondering what kind of trends are you seeing out there? there was a huge shift during covid where more people were getting pets because they were home, they were lonely. they didn't have that human interaction that they were used to. and so a lot of people were getting pets to fill that void. people are waiting longer to have children. their pets are their children and are treated as such. they are spoiled, they are fed the best foods, they are bought cashmere sweaters. they're truly treated like they're human children, because a lot of times, they are that placeholder for that human child. so the connection between human and pets has continued to evolve over time, and now that connection is so strong, and the amount we're spending on them has gone up exponentially as a result of that bond. and, loni, let me end on this.

we have seen like pet acupuncture? have you seen humanising of pets?- acupuncture? have you seen humanising of pets? pets are absolutely — humanising of pets? pets are absolutely humanised. - humanising of pets? pets are absolutely humanised. the i humanising of pets? pets are - absolutely humanised. the types of treatments are getting... you want everything that you have for yourself or you would have for yourself or you would have your human child, who would want them to have the best quality of life, so that taps into things and khaki pleasure, things like massage, things like more frequent checkups, making sure that the ingredient in their food are a better quality, whether that's human grade or organic or whatever direction you choose to go for yourself, a lot of people parallel that to their pets. i people parallel that to their ets. . , people parallel that to their ets. ., , ., ., pets. i am 'ust wondering about the pets. i am just wondering about the demographics _ pets. i am just wondering about the demographics here. - pets. i am just wondering about the demographics here. is - pets. i am just wondering about the demographics here. is it - the demographics here. is it just single people in younger people who are driving this humanisation? i people who are driving this humanisation?— humanisation? i think the connection _ humanisation? i think the connection between - humanisation? i think the i connection between human humanisation? i think the - connection between human and

pets has gotten tighter and more and more people are having pets. that said, it kind of depends on what other competing interests to have in your family. if you have a bunch of other kids or maybe are not treating your pet as much like a child as your kids because you have kids to focus on and better taking that detention, taking this resources, we are seeing more with people that don't necessarily have their own children yet, so we are seeing more of a concentration there, but overall, the amount people are spending and how they're doing their pets has shifted in a positive direction.— shifted in a positive direction. ., , ., direction. -- how they treating their pets- _ and, loni, let me end on this. i've got to ask you, is this just a fad? or do you think the way we embrace our pets today is here to stay? the way we embrace our pets is definitely here to stay. once you have this bond with a pet, it is not going anywhere. that connection is so strong. we've had this connection with dogs since the start of humans, and it's just gotten stronger and stronger and stronger, and i think it's

incredible, like, pets are... especially... i'm a dog person, so dogs in particular arejust the most loving — like, look at this. like, how do you go back from this? like, they'rejust here to stay. well, on that point, loni edwards, the founder and the big boss of the dog agency and, of course, to kayso, for being so patient during all of this, we really appreciate your time. thanks forjoining us. and we'll check in with you soon. thank you so much. bye. now, another growing part of the pet world is in pet care. who walks the dog while you're at the office? 0r who takes care of your furry friends when you're on holidays or vacation? it's all big business. so to find out how it all works, i caught up with the big boss of the biggest international online marketplace doing just that. it's rover.com. aaron easterly, a real pleasure having you on the show. and, aaron, let's start with this, the basics — i mean, how does rover work? what is it that you do? so rover is the world's largest marketplace for pet care.

so instead of taking your dog to a boarding facility or asking your father—in—law to care for your pet when you're away, you can go to our app or our website and find an animal lover in your neighbourhood to look after your pet while you're gone. aaron, how much of a change have you seen since this trend that we've been talking about on the show of humanising pets? i mean, for instance, are you getting more demands from your customers on their pet carers? are you having to basically adapt your offering? we get a lot of interesting requests. one of the things that makes rover work is that every stay, every service is customised to the pet and the pet parent in question. so if your dog is used to sleeping in the bed, you can find someone who wants the dog to sleep in the bed. if your dog is used to going to a dog park, you can find that. if your dog has special medication needs, you can find someone who can give them that medication. so that trend towards customisation and humanisation is very real, and it's been a driver of the business from day one.

aaron, tell us about the most bizarre request that you've had. well, you know, back in the early days of the company where i was actually doing a fair amount of pet sitting, i got requests to custom make meals. and i'm not talking about, like, pre—packaged food. like, actually, extensive recipes, and scallops — for a dog in question. are you serious? scallops? i mean, seriously, what next? but, listen, let me ask you this, aaron... the pet carriers are key to your business, villa kind of people are you talking about here? , ., �* , ., here? turns out there's no shortage — here? turns out there's no shortage of— here? turns out there's no shortage of animal- here? turns out there's no shortage of animal lovers. here? turns out there's no | shortage of animal lovers in europe, in the us, in north america, really, the world for that matter. people that do rover, it is not normally primary income, so that his love animals. they sign up, in north america they go through

background checks, in europe they could trade an __ go —— go through identity verification to maximum most people do it because they love spending time with animals and they get theirfix. spending time with animals and they get their fix. either because they have animals or they want more or because they don't have an animal of their own right now and used to, but can't spend to much time and not have an animal part of their life. you work across a number of countries — across the usa, canada and europe. so i'm kind of wondering, aaron, do you find different demands from each region? we do. you know, the humanisation of pets is pretty universal. and so the trends you see in the us around people's emotional relationship with their animals transcends pretty much every developed country. so in spain, you know, about half of spanish dog owners think that their dog is an appropriatejudge of their dating life so that they trust their dogs intuition on that. you know, 71% of people in the uk, actually, would prefer their dog to be

at their wedding than some of their friends and family. and so it's, you know, that humanisation, that emotional relationship where i start to view my dog as a child, not as a piece of property is pretty universal. and, aaron, i've got to ask you, just how much growth have you seen in the sector? because some of the numbers that we've been looking at on the show, the spend on pets is only heading in one direction and that is up. how are you seeing it and, importantly, how are you trying to capitalise on that? yeah, it's... just talking a little bit about the spend dynamics in the pet industry, you know, the percentage of households that own a pet or more than one pet has been increasing for most of the last 30, 40, 50 years. so that means the kind of pet population or the owned pet population grows faster than the human population. and then the spend per pet has also been increasing as people start to view their pets as children orfamily members and not properly,

they start to care about, "is this the right diet? "is this the right nutrition? "what's the right training methods?" and so you get this premiumization of products, from food to treats to toys to even the human delivered services, that also creates another level of growth above and beyond just the pet population growing. so the pet economy perpetually grows faster than the rest of the economy in general. and because of that reason, it's pretty immune to recession. at rover, we're continuing to look to expand both our geographic footprint as well as the services we offer. we want to make it easy for everyone to experience we have five core services now and we want six service training, but we want to expand that. we want to make it easy for everyone to experience the unconditional love of a pet. and so we think

it's a human tragedy that not everyone has a pet. and so we're just going down the list of the logistical concerns or the barriers to pet ownership and knocking them off one by one where we can. and, aaron, let me end on this. in five or so years, how do you see the pet industry developing? yeah, i think the trends towards humanisation, which have not been limited to developed countries but has been clearer in developed countries, you're going to see become truly a global phenomenon. people's relationship with their animals, turns out that it matures as a function of per capita gdp. as people have fewer human children, they tend to place more value on the relationships with their pets. so we think that will become more of a global phenomenon, notjust a developed country phenomenon, in the next five years. we think that the technology used to monitor your pet's wellbeing, health, activity will continue to improve and will start to become a little bit more ubiquitous. we expect that people will be

turning to their mobile phone first and most often any time an issue related to their pets comes up and that the small number of apps on your mobile phone that help you be an amazing pet parent will become indispensable. well, on that point, aaron easterly, the co—founder and the big boss of rover.com, really appreciate you coming on the show. thanks for your time. we'll talk to you soon. well, thanks, aaron. ok, let's go to the tech world now because it's transformed so many aspects of our lives, allowing us instant access to products and services like never before. but when something goes wrong, it's a common gripe that the array of automated customer service bots on offer do more to, well, irritate than help. well, my next guest is hoping to change all of that, bringing the latest cutting—edge artificial intelligence technology to the table. so i decided to catch up with the president and the chief product officer at the tech giant salesforce.

david schmaier, really great to have you on the show. and, david, i want to start with this, because in this show, we've been looking at the billions of dollars behind the global pet industry. so i want to start by asking you, do you have pets? so, aaron, we love pets in our house. and my wife and i, we have two dogs and we just simply love them to death. and, you know, to all the pet lovers all around the world, you know, we're with you. do you spend a lot of money on them? more than i would have thought. and probably like you, but, you know, it's worth every penny. 0k. that's great. so, david, let's talk about your company, salesforce. you're a huge company. in fact, you're the 61st largest company on the planet. but, look, let's be frank here. a lot of people watching this won't have heard of salesforce. so just briefly explain what it is you do and what is the core of your business. sure. salesforce helps companies connect with their customers in entirely new ways. so we work with some of the largest companies in the world, companies like amazon and bt and at&t

and unitedhealthcare and state farm insurance and federal express. we help them work with their customers across digital channels, physical stores, retail locations, across every channel. so it's really exciting work. and we think this is the future of business, is the best companies with the best customer relationships are the ones that win. and, david, i've got to ask you, how transformational to salesforce are the latest generative ai breakthroughs? cos i'm wondering what's exciting you about this technology? well, aaron, it's never been a more exciting time in business. and i've been working in this industry for over three decades, and this is by far the most exciting time in business. so by applying ai, which has been used in predictive form for over 20 years, but now the new generative ai really transforms how companies work. so it augments your people to do things faster

and to do things better and to personalise in real time. and so you can do things that, quite simply, you couldn't do before. so it's an amazing time to innovate and to go digital in this digitalfuture. so, david, salesforce, it's at the cutting edge, creating the latest customer service tech for business, and your latest offering is called einstein copilot. so i've got to ask you, what are its capabilities? what makes it stand out from the crowd? the copilot is a virtual assistant that is there in the software, and it helps you follow up with customers. it helps you automate action items with them. it gives you the answers to the customer's questions in real time. if i have a headset on and i'm in customer service, it automatically creates marketing campaigns that are personalised to what the customers want, or automatically transforms your website to make people to want to click and buy. so it's really, really cool stuff. it's amazing.

and this is the kind of ai innovation that the world has never seen before, and we're thrilled to bring it to our customers with einstein copilot. 0bviously, david, data, it's going to be king going forward in the ai world. how crucial is that data? and, importantly, how do you protect it? yeah, aaron, you're spot—on. the data is the new gold in this ai era. and so those with trusted data will have the best ai. and so it's all about that data. and the average company has hundreds or even thousands of systems. and so what our customer data cloud can do is take all that data and harmonise it so that there's a single golden record for each and every one of your customers. and that's essential in this ai age, because the data is the gold that powers the ai. what we allow you to his new unite other systems and harmonise the information into one single view of the customer, and that's essential

in this a ih, because the data is the gold that powers the ai. and, david, let me end on this. customer relationship management, has it changed over the years? cos i'm wondering, do customers expect more or less than they used to? so the crm industry has gone through dramatic change. so it started out as a $50 million customer custom software business. and today gartner and others predict it's over a $60 billion software market with hundreds, you know, tens of billions of services on top of that. so it's one of the largest segments in enterprise software and one of the single fastest growing. and the reason is, who doesn't want to connect with their customers and do that in a highly personalised and highly intelligent way? and it's changed a lot with the addition of these data and ai technologies. so it started with sales and then service and then marketing and e—commerce. and now with these data and ai technologies,

you can do magical things to provide magical moments with your customers. well, on that point, david schmaier, president and chief product officer at salesforce, great to have you on the show. we really appreciate your time. aaron, thank you for having me. well, that's it for this week's show. i hope you enjoyed it. don't forget, you can keep up with the latest on the global economy on the bbc website or the smartphone app. of course, you can also follow me on x. x me. i'll x you back. you can get me... thanks for watching. i'll see you soon. bye— bye. hello there. we're seeing some changes to the weather this weekend. part two of the weekend

promises to be quite wet across some eastern areas, another chilly but bright day further west that you are, but it marks a changed all weather because as we move into the new week, we'll start to draw up some warmer air from the near continent. many areas will actually turn a lot warmer than what we've had over the past week. this area of low pressure will continue to bring some rain to central, southern and eastern parts of england through the night. so early sunday, this is the position the rain will be in. less cold for england and wales, 5—8 degrees, but another cold night for scotland and northern ireland, a touch of frost. but it's here you'll have the best of the sunshine from the word go for sunday morning. further east, it will be a cloudy, wet picture, with that rain slowly pulling away from eastern england, becoming confined to north—east scotland, the northern isles. elsewhere, plenty of sunshine around, a few scattered showers developing into the afternoon, and a windy day to come, particularly close to the north sea, close near to that area of rain. temperature—wise, the low teens for many, but distinctly chilly again across this north—east corner. that rain continues to clear northwards into the northern isles during sunday night.

it turns a lot drier for many with clear spells. we'll start to see thicker cloud and some showery bursts of rain pushing into western areas, though, by the end of the night, though many areas will stay dry. temperature—wise, well, actually milder for many, particularly scotland and northern ireland, than we've had of late. still a few chilly spots there for north—east scotland. this is the picture for monday, certainly the pressure picture. we've got low pressure out toward the west. this will be bringing south or south—westerly winds across the country. and actually for large parts of england and wales, particularly towards the south and east, it's going to stay dry all day with some good spells of sunshine. but rain will be splashing into western areas and moving across the irish sea as we move through the course of the day. some of this will be quite heavy. we've got the low teens celsius in the north and the west. could be up to 16 or 17 celsius in the south—east with that sunshine and the warm wind coming off the continent. for the rest of the week, we hold on to lower pressure

towards the west of the uk. that will continue to bring our air source from the south—east or the east at times, and there will be weather fronts close by. so it's an unsettled theme, i think, but it's going to feel warmer throughout this week than what we've had over the past week. it could be up to 20 degrees in the warmest spots across the south—east. but with low pressure nearby, it will tend to remain on the unsettled side. take care.

live from washington, this is bbc news. israel's foreign minister says his country's military could suspend its planned incursion into rafah — if there is a deal where hamas releases its remaining hostages. the united nations warns of an attack in sudan's north darfur state saying the consequences would be devastating. after more russian attacks on ukraine, president zelensky renews his appeal for western allies to provide more air defences. i'm helena humphreys. good to have you with us. we start in the middle east, where israel's foreign minister has said a planned military incursion into rafah in gaza could be suspended. that's if a deal is made to free the remaining hostages held by hamas.

ceasefire negotiations between israel and hamas have been stalled for weeks.