Here’s the latest ad that landed in my Inbox
compared to previous ads, imo the wording is more acceptable now - but the pic of the house and the pool! After doing 40+ sits in the UK and France, I never saw such a deluxe hotel-like property. Not complaining, just saying it might be a tad misleading 
As the wording focuses on the animals, the ad could have stock photos of some cute cats or dogs…
IMO, they are targetting the wrong people in the wrong way. It is a travel hack FOR pet lovers. Whether you have a pet or love taking care of pets, this is the one travel hack you can’t live without. That’s the selling point. If you don’t start with the love of pets as well as travel you aren’t attracting “the right” people.
They also seriously need to drop age as a filter (as it is on the app). I’ve said it on other forums. It’s offensive. It would not be legal in many countries for employment or housing, so seeing it there feels wrong, certainly to Americans and Canadians. It makes paying members wonder why they are paying money to a company that actually facilitates age-discrimination…
This is related to the advertisements targetting sitters, because frankly instead of just looking for young beautiful influencer type sitters, it’s fine to go after an older demographic of active travel lovers overly 50. There are a lot of retirees and “empty nesters” in that demographic who may have even decided to no longer have their own pets but have YEARS of pet and housecare and are very trustworthy.
So you don’t want to offend your potential sitters or make them feel that they are “too old” for the job.
It’s absolutely insane that they are scrambling for sitters, while ignoring a great demographic of experienced trustworthy sitters.
And existing customers are 8 times more likely to buy than going after a new customer @Marion - you need to wake up to where the value is THS 
what is the age filter in the app? is it for hosts to select what age group they want their sitter to be? I was not aware of that.
I agree on this one - it seems odd that a host can filter and search for sitters in a specific age range and yet there is no function to search by the location that the sitter would like to house sit in.
A sitter can only put their current location which is unlikely to be the place that they want to house sit.
Whilst a sitter can write in their profile the countries they would like to do a house sit . There is no way for HOs to do a search on these.
This would be a much more useful function for homeowners and sitters.
Also the date range search that a homeowner can do is “broken” ( I don’t know if it ever did work ??? ) since it brings up sitters who are are already are committed to THS sits on the dates the HO has searched for . I know this from being frequently contacted by HOs who request us but when I point out we are showing as already on a sit on our calendar they say they hadn’t checked the calendar since they had done a search for available sitters for their specific dates and so they assumed that since our profile came up in the search we were therefore available.
Exactly - and I would say that is (should be) true for BOTH sitters and HOs. Except that’s not where the money is, so…
The photo of that house 
There’s not even a pet in it!
I didn’t know there was an age filter - how does that work? Is it just for search, or does it somehow screen people outside your preferred age range from applying for a sit? If it’s just a search to send personal invites, I don’t think it’s a problem, as anyone using it would likely just skip over profiles outside that range anyway.
I reverse-image-googled that photo, and in one of those a company had photoshopped five hanging flower baskets (plastic) on that patio.
THS could have done something similar with a bunch of pets 
On the app – not on the web, you can filter for age. They ask if “don’t mind” any age, or they have it down to around 10 year intervals.
As I’ve said in other forums, yes if people are determined to discriminate by age, they could do so by looking at the photos. But actually having a filter makes it easier. A responsible company shouldn’t be actively ENCOURAGING any form of discrimination by filtering for it.
I know that there are responsible people, young and old, but I usually prefer older sitters.
The reason is that many of them have or used to have their own house and have experience in handling any kind of situation, which might occur.
It’s not only about pet sitting but also taking care of a house and as I also have been in this situation, I know that I would not have handled things in the same way when I was in my early twenties.
Therefore the age filter, seen from the other side, is not discriminating. It just saves me time if I look for potential sitters. I would not choose the very young ones anyway so why scroll through their profiles?
@cat.tails - yes a distinct lack of pets in the image of a property that is not actually a current listing. 
The more I think about it, the more questions I have about this age filter. Maybe it is worth creating a separate thread to discuss this, but it might be more ueseful in the Owners/hosts section rather than Sitters section?
EDIT: I see there are several threads on the question of Age of Sitters so I might just post my questions there
I’ve worked in marketing, and I can tell you exactly what happened here because it happened to me. THS hired a slick marketing firm that promised big returns on a social media/email marketing campaign. THS turned over responsibility for content to this company, which does not understand its mission or how it works, and plugged in copy (“Jobs”) and stock images (completely unrelated to reality) designed to simply get lots of people to click through to the site. Somebody at THS must have reached out to get them to correct the copy (I had to do it multiple times with the marketing company we hired) but they haven’t done anything about the images, probably because THS doesn’t actually own the rights to decent photos that accurately convey the experience AND would be appealing to a wide audience. I hope THS is getting their money’s worth from this marketing spend …
imo, it is very sad that marketing firms are paid a lot of money to create totally misleading advertising which can possibly lead to THS attracting the wrong types of members.
I guess that THS’ only source of income is membership fees? I wonder what percentage of annual income is spent on marketing. How many (new and old) members need to pay their annual fees to cover the costs of these ads? Obviously, it’s none of my business but I’m interested to ponder these questions
I don’t know the answer exactly @cat.tails but it’s usual for a marketing firm to ask a business to spend 10% of their annual turnover to have as a budget. 180,000 customers at an average of £150 a year gives them £2.7 million to use if those numbers are even close to right. I’ve worked in marketing (both client and agency side) for 20+ years and have my own consultancy. What’s bonkers about these big agencies is they ignore the value of existing customers. They are EIGHT times more likely to buy from the business than spending money looking for new ones. More loyal, cheaper to retain, simpler to manage and your own wonderful, free PR machine. Marketing agencies always want to change things as if to prove they’re better than the last big firm. Much like management consultants. They can’t adopt and improve what’s already there, it’s as if it’s their ego will suffer. THS need to think about their core values. It it’s money then fine. If it’s client retention and satisfaction then 100% not!!
At the end of the day, the client, in this instance TH, would have to approve the advertisement and photos before going live wouldn’t one agree?
Yes but house sitting is their core skill @ziggy - not marketing. They’ll be sold “why this image works” and often talked into using it if attracting new clients is their key priority. They’ll also be looking at what the competition are doing and often copy/mimic it.
Understand @Cuttlefish , agreed. One would think TH would stick with its ethos of pets over houses and advertise accordingly but I totally get where you are coming from. I believe the TH name should change to Trusted Pet and House Sitters, or similar. It definitely sends the wrong message how it stands now.
They are the biggest housesitting site in the world and we are just a cog in what makes that wheel turn. They are rich, we aren’t 
Hi everyone 
an interesting conversation about the pros and cons of THS advertising, thank you and we’ll certainly forward your feedback on to the Marketing Team who manage all activities in house.
