Known for their aggressive and often outrageous advertising strategies,
PETA (People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals) is the largest animal rights
organization in the world with over three million members and supporters
worldwide. PETA was founded in 1980 with the goal to stop animal suffering by
generating public awareness and encouraging people to take the appropriate
actions towards ending unnecessary abuse.
The organization’s fundamental belief is that animals, like humans
deserve to have their best interests taken into consideration and that all
beings have the right to be free from harm where it can be avoided. PETA has
four major areas in which it focuses its attention. These comprise of factory
farming, laboratories, the clothing trade and the entertainment industry. PETA
is against animal testing, the use of fur in clothing and animals being used
for entertainment purposes. They value better education on animal cruelty and
eating a vegetarian or vegan diet.
To achieve their goal of animal liberation, PETA’s
strategies include public education, cruelty investigations, animal rescue,
legislation, research, celebrity backings and protest campaigns. PETA is a non-profit
organization that earns its revenue through donations; for this reason they
heavily rely on free ‘advertising’ through media coverage to spread their
message. Many of PETA’s methods for getting around this have been described as
controversial and aggressive, however, many of their campaigns have also been
incredibly successful in generating awareness and action. It would seem that in
general, PETA’s communication strategies, though controversial, are exceptional
at achieving the goals of the organization. Although they are successful in
achieving their goals, PETA as an organization has had difficulty upholding a
positive image to their target audience, the ordinary people of America. Although
most people are supportive of animal liberation, many people have a strong
dislike towards PETA and this could potentially impact their support in the
long term. This audit will explore how PETA’s successful communication
strategies have helped them achieve their goals and also, how their less
successful communication strategies with ordinary American citizens, primarily
non-vegetarians, have made them come off as hateful and exclusive.
In order to evoke action and disseminate their message among
ordinary citizens, PETA focuses on shock tactics to get noticed. One example of this is in their distribution
of disturbing images depicting animal cruelty. This is a type of violent action
because it is going against what society wants to see. Our society lives
comfortably by blocking out these types of images and issues from our everyday
thought. Therefore, when people are exposed to images of animals suffering in
laboratories and in factory farming they feel extremely uncomfortable and do
not want to believe what they see. By disrupting the status quo in this way,
PETA is successfully able to elicit emotions from their audience and create an
effect on them by which they feel the need to take action. One emotion felt is guilt, but more
importantly, the main purpose of showing these images is to make people so
angry that they feel the need to act. On
their website, PETA acknowledges this idea by stating, “[a]nger plays an
important role in motivating people to sit down and write letters to their
lawmakers, newspapers, or local authorities demanding an end to animal abuse.”[1]
PETA seems to believe strongly that anger plays an important role in driving
change.
PETA also aims to disrupt the status quo by using various
forms of conventions of contention. Due to having a limited budget for
advertising and a message that is so often overlooked, PETA relies on
controversial and often outrageous tactics to gain free media coverage. When
PETA comes to mind, one may associate them with throwing blood on celebrities
as they walked the red carpet, throwing tofu pies at fishery workers and publically
displaying nude females locked up in cages. These forms of protest are so
outrageous that they were able to gain significant attention towards their
message. Once heads are turned in the
direction of the abusers, there becomes a pressing urge for some sort of
response from them. Also, the public remembers them. Each of the above examples is symbolic to
PETA’s claim; the blood represents the animals that were killed for use of
their fur, the pies represent veganism, and the nude females represent caged
animals with no sense of dignity. Due to the media attention that these
disruptions cause and the symbolic reminders they offer to their target
audience, PETA’s use of controversial tactics is successful in advancing their cause.
Although these tactics are not ethically sound to many critics (especially
feminists), they are excellent examples of direct action, which PETA’s
president Ingrid Newkirk is a strong advocate for. The direction she has taken
the organization echo the views of Saul Alinsky who believed that organizers
should take whatever means necessary to reach their goals.
Having employed these tactics, PETA has been able to secure
countless victories for animal welfare. As an organization with a history of
successes and a purpose that most reasonable people agree with, PETA is still faced
with intense scrutiny and dislike from a large proportion of their target
audience. Critics describe PETA as a cult-like, hateful and exclusive organization
with the attitude “you either agree with us 100% or you are out.” Based on
this, it would appear that PETA’s tactics have become problematic because they
have failed to establish shared meaning with their audience. PETA’s tactics
reflect interest-based organizing, where their fundamental concern is pushing
their opinions upon an audience of meat-eaters and people who are unaware of
the current state of animal welfare. In addition to pushing their own beliefs,
they claim that their members are vegetarian or vegan and are strong advocates
of veganism, which is especially evident in their rejection of factory farming.
By putting emphasis on this value within their organization, they have
constructed a wall between PETA members and meat eaters, who they have often
referred to as ‘murderers’. This is a problem because as a result, non-vegans
find it very difficult to feel that the ways in which animal rights is
meaningful to them is the same way it is meaningful to PETA (in the eyes of
PETA, they are the cause of the problem in the first place). Therefore, rather than being pulled towards
the community of PETA members, meat-eaters feel excluded from the cause,
unwelcomed and feel the need to distance themselves as far as possible from the
organization. This is intensely
problematic for PETA because meat eaters make up the majority of the population
and they also make up the main target audience of PETA’s advertising.
If PETA wishes to be successful in gaining support from this
portion of the public and increase their membership, an interest-based approach
alone will not be enough. Pushing their beliefs upon outsiders will not gain
their support, instead they must aim to reduce the gap they have created between
insiders and outsiders of the organization and make these people feel like they
can contribute and support the organization, even if they are not vegan. In
order to reduce this gap, PETA must begin by creating mutual understanding
between them and outsiders. This process should be easy for PETA because most
people agree that animals should have rights and should not be subject to undue
suffering; going about this in a sensitive manner is the challenge. PETA should
stop using campaign messages such as “Meat is Murder” and “Your Mommy Kills
Animals” as these immediately shut down opportunities for building
relationships with the outsiders; they need to start with what they can agree
on, which is basic animal rights. If potential PETA members can feel a
connection to the organization while also feeling that they are not being
judged for eating meat, they are more likely to become inquisitive about the
cause and not feel like they are being excluded in any way.
To ensure this connection is effectively established, PETA
should seek out prominent figures that support animal rights across different
regions to act as representatives for PETA. This would provide a contact point
for ordinary people to speak with someone they trust, thus they are not forced
to depend on PETA’s website or what they see in the media for information. PETA
also needs to pledge that they will be considerate of those who support animal
welfare, but are not at a stage of their lives to consider veganism. Since meat
eaters are such a large proportion of the population, PETA needs to recognize
that these people can still be passionate and make a difference in improving
the lives on animals and they must articulate this to their audience. For this
reason, the representatives that they seek out should not necessarily be vegans
or vegetarians, there should be a mixture of both insiders and so-called
outsiders. This will eliminate the climate of exclusivity that PETA currently
fosters as meat eaters will no longer feel like distant outsiders. Everyone
will be able to rally around the same basic shared value, and this will lead to
improved social cohesion. Once a certain level of cohesion is felt among
members or interested parties, a sense of community will begin to emerge. This
sense of community will make members satisfied and passionate about the
organizational goals. The representative should focus on being able to create
open communication with the public and constantly reinforce the value that
everyone agrees on. They should not delve into the promotion of veganism unless
a person expresses an interest in the idea and asks questions. Only once the
representative has made contact and communication possible and established
shared meaning with a potential member can PETA attempt to advance their deeper
beliefs.
If PETA were to follow these recommendations, they would
become closer to eliminating the negativity that people feel towards their
organization. They would reduce the gap between insiders and outsiders, making
outsiders more likely to consider taking action towards PETA’s goals.
Furthermore, having community representatives would help foster an inclusive environment
for members, encourage face-to-face communication and enforce the fundamental
value that is shared by all. Members would feel more bound to the organization
this way and would therefore, become more passionate and active in their
involvement. On the other hand, PETA may not feel the need to improve their
public image at this point. The tactics they have utilized to generate
awareness are impactful and successful in terms of their animal welfare
victories. PETA might claim that they are able to effectively achieve their
goals without having to foster an inclusive member community and without having
to go against their values by accepting non-vegetarians into their
movement.
[1] "FAQ:
I Can't Bear to Look at Some of the Graphic Photos You Use. Can't You Tone It
down a Little?" PETA.ORG. n.d. Web. 22 Feb. 2014.
