After a beloved pet-costume parade was canceled, dog food brand Get Joy helped resurrect it

It’s never easy to determine the value a brand gets from sponsoring an event. Who’s to say for certain that a particular purchase was driven by your brand’s logo being on a lanyard or banner at an outdoor concert or half-marathon?

But it would be hard to overstate the value that Get Joy, a Connecticut dog wellness company, is getting from sponsoring this year’s Tompkins Square Halloween Dog Parade, a pet costume contest that draws national and international press attention and took place last weekend.

The event, after all, nearly didn’t happen. It had been canceled on September 27 by its organizers, who explained in an Instagram post that “despite our best efforts…there was just no way to hold the parade this year.”

(Full disclosure: For a few years up until 2019, this reporter served as an unpaid volunteer judge for the parade’s dog-costume contest. I used to be somebody.)

In the dog house: Joseph Borduin, who has volunteered to run the event in recent years, has called himself the “lead pooper scooper” and “head of operations” for the Tompkins Square Dog Run. Borduin told Gothamist in the wake of the cancellation that, due to construction in the park, permits and insurance would cost more than $50,000 for the event.

That’s when the fur started to fly.

Jonathan Graziano, who has 4.4 million followers on TikTok—thanks to viral videos of his late elderly pug, Noodle, whom Graziano would prop up in his dog bed daily and, depending on whether Noodle stayed upright or rolled onto his side, would determine it a “bones” or “no bones” day—took to social media to decry the cancellation.

“What is the value of New York City if not the promise of seeing dogs in Halloween costumes once a year?” Graziano asked in a video posted to TikTok and Instagram. The event, he continued, was “a glimmer of whimsy within a city of sewage.”

One of the people who saw that post on Instagram, where it drew more than 14,300 likes and 343 comments, was Tom Arrix, who founded Get Joy in 2018 and serves as its CEO.

“We wanted to raise our hand to help,” Arrix told Retail Brew. “And that’s exactly what we did.”

Dogged determination: “Round of a-paws,” a Gothamist headline declared on October 4, a week after the event had been declared dead. “Tompkins Square Halloween dog fest is back on, organizers say.”

It turns out, the New York Times reported, that the mayor’s office helped get the permits down from $45,000 to $5,000, which as part of its sponsorship Get Joy agreed to pay along with other fees, including the cost for a stage, which Borduin told the Times would be $10,000

Arrix, who showed up at the event with his golden retriever, Theo, and the brand’s eye-catching 1973 custom Volkswagen van, was exuberant.

“If we had a dream of a sponsorship, where our brand is a part of something really meaningful, this is it,” he told us. “We’re part of this joy creation, and it’s exactly what we see every day and what we try to create in our storytelling.”

Among those reporting on Get Joy helping to save the day was Graziano, whose post on Instagram first set Arrix in motion.

“Get Joy—you’re getting your laurels from this,” Graziano said in a video he posted after the news broke. “Thank you so much.”