PETA ads, a lesson in messaging
How PETA ads can, and often are, counterproductive in the
message their transmitting
By Emilio
Hernández de Alba april 13th, 2022
There’s this series of ads that PETA released which consist
of celebrities next to text that says something to the kind of “wearing fur
coats is bad '' along other messages that align with other things PETA believes
in. As mentioned before, these ads are pretty provocative. A notable example is
one that includes Chistine Dolce holding the fake carcass of a skinned animal
with text below saying “fur in your collar is blood on your hands” along with
some text in the upper left about how animals are treated badly.
(image credit: PETA)
The main goal of these ads is to convince people via shock
value. People would get horrified by the images they see and they decide to
stop wearing fur coats. But this focus on shock value is what can make these
ads counterproductive, as it makes the viewer focus on the looks of the ad
rather than the message of the ad.
(image credit PETA)
A lot of people, when they first see ads ike this, won't
think “wow, maybe we should do something about animal cruelty” instead, they’ll
think, “why is Dave Navaro looking at me while he’s naken[1]
and with a couple of bloody parts'' It centres the conversation around the
provocativeness of the ad rather than what the provocativeness of the ad is
trying to say.
Another good example is a game that PETA made that was also
kind of an ad. It’s a parody of the popular video game franchise Pokemon, but
instead of playing as a trainer, catching pokemon and battling them with other
pokemon, you play as pokemon who are escaping captivity. You battle against
your captors, and all the pokemon look
like they're all beaten up and are a bit bloody in some parts.
(image from the website from where to
play the game, from Peta)
When I first saw this game, as I'm sure many people did, I
didn’t even know it was made by PETA. I initially thought it was a fan game
that was just Pokemon but edgy. It wasn’t until much later that I discovered it
was made by PETA as a way to spread their message about animal rights. And I'm
sure a lot of people had a similar experience to mine. Or at least when they
think of the game, they first think of all the pokemons and trainers being a
bit bloody, and not what the game itself is trying to say.
One could even say that these kinds of ads have the opposite
effect, it
can turn [2] people
away from veganism or other things PETA is trying to push. As much as these ads
have shock value, they also have a repulsion value. People don’t really like
something being aggressively pushed in their faces, which PETA ads often do as
shown by the examples given above and other sorts of behaviour they have
engaged in. It makes them not want to be near or interact with those things
because they associate it with feelings of annoyance or revulsion, which is the
exact effect PETA ads can have on the many people that see them. They’re
revolted by the imagery shown, and so, they will firstly associate PETA with
the organisation that makes the ads that are really weird and are a bit gory.
And what PETA actually is, an animal rights organisation, [3] comes
only as a second thought.
Of course, there are people who have been persuaded by PETA
ads. I’m not trying to say that these ads are completely useless. But there’s
no denying that these ads have alienated thousands, possibly even millions of
people that could have been on board with what PETA is promoting. I also don’t
want to give the impression that I believe that being provocative is not a good
way of delivering a message. It certainly can be. But it’s one of those things
that needs to be handled carefully. It can either be a good way to get people
on board with something, or, for the reasons stated above, it can have the
complete opposite effect. So the main take away from this article, really, is
that PETA ads are a lesson on how not to do provocative messaging.
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