When it comes to marketing ourselves, animal activism is in a challenging position compared to other social movements. Other movements directly help the people involved (women’s rights benefit women). With our animal activist campaigns, it seems we get nothing that improves personal lives. True, there are benefits like environmental impact and pandemic preparedness, but they lack the bite of personal motivation. Instead, we could be positioning ourselves as a small band of renegades taking on corrupt corporate giants. ‘Project Slingshot’ is already exploring this narrative angle to some success. Their campaigns spotlight the agricultural industry’s lies. Rather than making people feel guilty, they name corporations as the villains and hand people the power to do something about it.
ZACHARY SEGALL: No one knows we exist. Oh sure, people know about veganism and PETA after a couple decades of us yelling on street corners. But as soon as you step outside the messaging of “go vegan” and “fur is murder,” recognition falls off and it falls off fast. I don’t know if I’ve met a single person outside of animal advocacy or Effective Altruism who’s heard of The Humane League. And THL is one of the bigger organizations out there. Good luck if you’re part of a local group working on a niche campaign. This lack of recognition is bad news for anyone trying to recruit new activists. No one is going to join a group they don’t know exists.
We need to introduce people to our groups and our work. There are two ways of doing so: money and time. With money, you buy ads. Ads might seem prohibitively expensive for a movement strapped for cash (though maybe not for much longer), but there’s room to maneuver. We’re not trying to make millions off a new soda, so we don’t have to buy a whole billboard. A couple hundred dollars of well-placed Facebook ads might be enough to bring in a batch of new activists. It’s still a lot of money for a local group, but larger organizations like PETA and THL could direct some of their budget towards experimenting with targeted ads.
On the other hand is time. The simplest way to exchange time for awareness is for local advocates to show up in new places. Happy hours, sports leagues, other activist groups, you name it. We just have to be friendly and talk about our groups in a welcoming way. Despite the simplicity, we do this shockingly little. Most vegans and animal advocates tend to clump with other vegans and animal advocates. Just as you can’t find a date if you never leave your house, you can’t find new activists if you never leave your social circle…
When it comes to marketing ourselves, animal activism is in a challenging position compared to other social movements. Other movements directly help the people involved: women’s rights benefit women, civil rights benefit black people, unions benefit laborers. When we win our campaigns, animal activists get exactly nothing that improves our personal lives. True, there are benefits like environmental impact and pandemic preparedness, but they lack the bite of personal motivation. Far-off concerns are fine for the rarefied few who can live off a sense of moral satisfaction, but are not so great for building a mass movement. If we want to reel people in, we have to either give people a positive narrative about themselves or materially improve their lives.
Everyone loves to feel like they’re a hero in a story and will go to extreme measures to uphold that image. Here we fumble some of our biggest opportunities. Whenever we focus on people’s complicity in factory farming, we cast them as the villain. There is a time and place to confront someone with their complicity or hypocrisy, but you know what isn’t that time? When you’re first meeting someone and pitching your group to them. No one wants to join a group that treats anyone outside the group as the villain.
Instead, we could be positioning ourselves as a small band of renegades taking on corrupt corporate giants. Project Slingshot is already exploring this narrative angle to some success. Their campaigns spotlight the agricultural industry’s lies. Rather than making people feel guilty, they name corporations as the villains and hand people the power to do something about it. We can employ similar narratives for our local groups, giving people agency in a world that says they have none.
We have a little more work to do on the material improvements side. There’s a number of approaches to making supporters’ lives better, but one we’re well-suited to is good fun and good food. We all know how to make delicious and affordable vegan food. Free taco night or a chili cookoff would serve the existing community while giving us something to talk up to potential advocates. We’re not exactly known for our parties, but we could be. We’d be delivering the good times that every food commercial pretends to.
These are just a few ideas. In the end, the specifics are less important than the practice of reflecting on how we can help those who advocate for animals. Easy answers are dangerous. Every city and culture has its own character and challenges which merit understanding its people’s needs. Nor will they stay static. Cities, cultures, and people never stop growing, so we have to grow alongside them. Wherever we find ourselves, whatever changes come, ask “what can we do for you?” SOURCE
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