Critical Analysis Paper: PETAs Anti-fur Campaign

Introduction
People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals, or PETA, as they are more commonly
referred to, is an animal rights organization that works to, establish and defend the rights
of animals (All About PETA). Co-founded by Ingrid Newkirk, who also runs the
organization now, PETA operates on the, simple principle that animals are not ours to eat,
wear, experiment on, or use for entertainment (All About PETA).

Over the years, PETA has campaigned and protested against any and all individuals,
companies, or industries that they deem as infringing upon animals rights, often resorting
to extreme tactics meant to grab the headlines resulting in them being placed squarely on
opposite ends of the love-hate spectrum as it pertains to the public discourse. There is
rarely a middle ground when it comes to PETA and that is okay by them. They openly admit
that they are a media-centered organization that relies on the free advertising that is
afforded to them when the media covers them, thereby shedding light on the issue of
animal rights and cruelty.

PETA clearly lives and dies by the old public relations/marketing doctrine that all
publicity is good publicity and it appears that they purposely craft advertising campaigns
fully intending to maximize their mere exposure. This is none more evident than in their
anti-fur campaigns that often feature nudity or jarring images combined with appeals for
equal equality.

Exactly how effective these campaigns are in achieving efficacy merits critical
analysis. For this paper, I will focus on the anti-fur campaign as a whole, drawing from
various different series of campaigns like Id (Wed) Rather Go Naked Than Wear Fur,
Canadas Club Scene Sucks, Heres the Rest of Your Fur Coat and You Wouldnt Wear Your Dog
that use a mixture of low involvement peripheral processing, cognitive dissonance and
cultural premises to help bring about attitude change.

Analysis
PHYSICAL ATTRACTIVENESS AS A PERIPHERAL CUE
PETAs advertising campaigns rely heavily on physical attractiveness to draw
attention to their ads. The majority of their print ads in the Id Rather Go Naked series
feature famous celebrities posing nude with the slogan Id Rather Go Naked Than Wear
Fur splashed across the advertisement. Similarly, the Ink Not Mink shows heavily
tattooed, often muscular, celebrities and athletes posing topless or nude and advocating to
the viewer that they should, Be Comfortable In Your Own Skin and Let Animals Keep
Theirs. In the Whos Skin Are You In? campaign, PETA similarly utilizes beautiful models
painted like exotic wildlife animals used to make clothing or accessories to question the
morality of skinning animals.




Peripheral Cues and Low Involvement Processing
At first glance, it seems like a shallow marketing ploy to simply feature beautiful
celebrities and hope that peoples attitudes will change off of that alone, but it works in
capturing a viewers attention. Attractiveness sells.

PETA is banking on the audience processing messages peripherally under the
Elaboration Likelihood Model, which suggests that people with low motivation to process
will look to simple visual cues to help them make decisions. They understand that
culturally, most people grew up eating meat and wearing leather boots and therefore their
attitudes towards animal rights and cruelty may be heavily engrained and as such they
would reject a more logical appeal to give up fur or other animal products. In this case,
beauty serves as a visual heuristic. One begins to associate the celebrity with the message
and that can have a positive effect on influencing opinions.

Mans Man/Womans Woman
Another aspect of physical attractiveness that is used is the idea of the Mans
Man/Womans Woman. Many of the advertisements in the Ink Not Mink series feature
athletes or musicians who generally fit the cultural stereotype of what it means to be
macho and successful. Tall, good-looking and often muscular men are featured in this
series. It subtly implies that being comfortable in your own skin, often a sign of confidence
and physical attractiveness, involves being tattooed and muscular; your typical
stereotypical definition of a bad ass.



Similarly, the female celebrities in their advertisements all conform to more
conventional ideas of feminine beauty. Most of the models are thin, and practically without
any physical imperfections.

In some cases, PETA knowingly violates these typical expectations of attractiveness
helping it to influence opinions. Most of the Id Rather Go Naked series features
conventionally beautiful men and women. However, PETA also put out an advertisement
with a naked Steve-O that violates that expectation of beauty that can also make us pause
for a second to think about the message. Another example of this is the Wear Your Own
Fur advertisement with David Cross where he poses on a fashion runway. The imagery
and humor within it serves as a peripheral cue in helping to get the message across.



COGNITIVE DISSONANCE
Another overarching persuasive tactic that PETA employs throughout their ads is to
create cognitive dissonance within the viewer.

PETA does this in the If You Wouldnt Wear Your Dog campaign by appealing to
the viewers emotions. This campaign is unique to PETA in that it doesnt rely on the
disturbing visual images that have come to define PETAs activism. Instead, they use images
of owners posing with their pets. In doing so, it creates a cognitive imbalance within the
viewer because no sane person would ever wear his or her dog, so how could one possibly
wear another animal?



This series of ads is also a more globally appealing and effective one because PETA
targets a group of people that could be dog owners and yet, still like to wear fur. PETA is
hoping that these people see the ad and feel a sense of similarity with the person in the
poster and be able to identify with the logic.

CULTURAL PREMISES
Another common theme within PETAs persuasive message appeals is their use and
of cultural premises, primarily the Rot at the Top and Mob at the Gates parables, within
their advertisements.

Rot at the Top & Mob at the Gates
Take the Canadas Club Scene Sucks series of advertisements as an example. The
advertisement features images of baby seals being clubbed to death with the words,
Clubbing baby seals is sick and gives Canada a black eye. Dont the greed of a few tarnish
the image of the whole country.



This campaign utilizes the Rot at the Top and the Mob at the Gates parables to
call on the viewer to fight the greed of a few and challenges the viewer to act by creating a
sense of cognitive dissonance within the viewer because if one does nothing about it, they
would in essence be sick individuals who stood by and let baby seals be clubbed to death.
Surely, this imbalanced self-perception would cause one to reduce that dissonance. It also
appeals the human and nationalistic sensibilities of the Canadian viewer calling on them to
unite against the, greed of a few and prevent Canada from getting a black eye.

Another advertisement that plays to this idea is the Fake, For The Bears Sake ad
that tells viewers that Bears suffer and die for the Queens guards caps. The ad subtly
implies that the weak morals of the elite in keeping with traditions are causing bears pain
and suffering.

http://www.mediapeta.com/peta/images/main/sections/mediacenter/printads/Ri
ckyWhittleBearskinsFINAL72.pdf

SHOCK VALUE
What would a PETA advertising analysis be without a mention of its notoriously
gory and blood filled posters. With these ads, PETA forces the viewer confront the harsh
reality of the processes that go into making fur coats. They try to shake the viewer into
giving fur up because they have to see the dead animals with their heads still intact hanging
lifelessly.

By creating that cognitive dissonance within the viewer, who is now confronted
with the fact that what they are wearing is essentially a dead animal, PETA hopes to
influence people into giving up their fur. Unfortunately, as effectively as these ads may be in
opening the viewers eyes to the cruelty that is involved, these ads can also be the ones that
are most likely to be ignored, because people may prefer to simply put their heads in the
sand and live life without knowing what actually goes on.


Conclusion
Determining PETAs success in structuring a persuasive message cannot be
quantified in black and white terms. When the goal of an organization is to simply get the
message across at whatever costs necessary, it can be difficult to judge it on persuasive
merits. However, in striving to reach as many people as possible, PETA has had to use
persuasive strategies that rely heavily on peripheral methods of processing information
that do not always influence long term change. In the end peripheral cues like banking on
the physical attractiveness of someone or shocking someone into action dont always yield
results because of a low motivation to process information.





































Works Cited

All About PETA. Web. 17 December 2012. < http://www.peta.org/about/learn-about-
peta/default.aspx>

Perloff, Richard. The Dynamics of Persuasion. New York: Routledge, 4
th
ed.