Last week the animal rights campaign Peta caused a stir with an online advert that suggested you don't have to eat meat to be a red-blooded male. The evidence? A girl wearing a neck brace as a result of injuries caused by her vegan boyfriend who could "bring it like a tantric porn star". But is it fair to outrage viewers to get a message across?
Peter Stanford, broadcaster and director of the Longford Trust
Yes, they should use shock tactics, and perhaps we need to do it more. The two "causes" that I have worked on most – prison reform and disability rights – are both good examples of where measured, reasoned, sensible tactics have delivered meagre results. Everyone now knows why prison doesn't "work", but we still allow our politicians to lock up more people than anywhere else in Europe. That is shocking. So why not harness some of that, and shock back, so as to make people sit up and pay attention. The very fact that we are discussing Peta's ad shows how effective this no-holds-barred approach is in pushing this organisation and its otherwise let-me-think-about-that-tomorrow message to the top of the agenda.
Alex Clark, journalist and writer
Well, we might be talking about it, but I'm not sure we can say how far that will translate into people a) putting their hands in their pockets or b) taking up the cudgels, as it were, on behalf of the world's oppressed animals. In fact, I'd guess that it's more likely to kickstart an awful lot of chatter about the medium, and rather less about the message. Their digital ad "Boyfriend Went Vegan" shows a young woman in a neck brace hobbling home with the groceries – strictly animal-free, of course. "Jessica" is suffering from a syndrome called "boyfriend went vegan and knocked the bottom out of me"; in other words, so infused with energy and strength is her partner since eschewing pork chops that their sex life leaves her looking like a victim of domestic violence.
And therein lies the problem: the reason people have taken offence at Peta's ad is that it's essentially a parody of the campaigns run by charities working with the victims of physical and sexual abuse. Shock tactics are one thing: but is bending the work of other organisations to your subversive will really the answer?
PS There are clearly good and bad shock tactics. Peta is an old hand here, having used them effectively over a number of years to raise itself head and shoulders above animal welfare charities – in terms of public impact and the fund-raising that goes with that. And, yes, this one does sail very close to the wind. What they are challenging here is the popular stereotype that vegans are insipid, pale and limp. They have mixed in a fashionable patina of sex, presumably to appeal to a younger audience. Whether it parodies sexual violence is debatable. You could just as easily argue that it simply borrows the language of raunchy sex movies. I am not well-qualified to judge, but don't immediately feel the ad is belittling the very important issue of sexual abuse.
AC Close to the wind, indeed! I must say I think they could have made just as raunchy and irreverent an ad without resorting to the neck brace and the faux earnest voiceover. But I take your point that they're playing with perceptions of vegans (who, we must assume, are as likely to be able to "bring it like a tantric porn star" as the heartiest of meat eaters). Nonetheless, how far do you think shock tactics in general actually work for charities or public information campaigns?
I ask because it strikes me that what they're utilising – particularly in ads like this that are designed to go viral – is the tendency for something to create a moment of mass outrage and debate, and shoot whoever's done the outraging to the top of the agenda. The problem is that the debate ends up being about the ad and not the issue. Do you think it's worth it?
PS It may be in poor taste, but to tackle your wider point: charities, like businesses, need to "build brand" so that there is that instant association in the public mind between the charity's name and the issue. Think animal welfare, think Peta. And this charity has been very successful at that. Once the link is made, it can exploit it by putting over a more measured and detailed case. But shock tactics have also clocked up some notable victories on issues. Think the pregnant man ad from the Family Planning Association in 1970 that changed male attitudes to their responsibility for contraception, or the many shocking campaigns around drink-driving that have dramatically shifted notions of what is acceptable behaviour when you are behind the wheel of a car.
AC Undoubtedly there are some issues that benefit from being addressed with great immediacy and vigour, and the way that widespread permissiveness about drink-driving has shifted to an almost total intolerance of it is a good example. But I think those tactics work less well when people feel that they're being lectured to on a subject they quite reasonably have their own opinions about; veganism is one such. We might not mind being provoked to think; but I reckon we feel less open to being either bossed about or having our emotions manipulated. And when you have the suspicion that an organisation is more intent on trending on Twitter than engaging in a debate, I think the whole thing falls apart.
PS It all comes down to the quality of the thinking behind adopting shock tactics. They should never be used casually. If you are going to risk causing profound offence, you must first be sure that the cause you are drawing to the public's attention is worthy of the potential controversy.
I'm a bit compromised on animal rights as a meat-eater (organic only, if that mitigates it) but think that Peta's cause here is not the joys of veganism (hardly a show-stopper in itself) but animal welfare. And that is something many feel absolutely passionately about, over and above any other issue. I suppose the suspicion that Peta's ad generates comes because they have used shock tactics so often in the past. What is that phrase about keeping your powder dry so it is still there when you really need it? Shock tactics can and do work, but the more you resort to them, the less their impact will be.
AC And, of course, shock is relative – when we're surrounded by explicit imagery and highly sexualised language, where is there left to go? I wouldn't describe myself as "shocked" by "Boyfriend Went Vegan": I do understand that people have rough sex. But I did think it was silly and crude, and I also felt that there was a kind of needless cruelty to it, in the sense that it would be upsetting to people who had suffered domestic violence.
I also think it fuels a weird cultural phenomenon, in which we seem to lurch from one offence storm to the next, which either results in the offending person or agency backing down and apologising or defiantly standing by their guns. With a vast increase in the numbers of ways that we can interact with one another, we seem to have set aside reasoned debate in favour of bombing raids and distress flares. Enough! I think I'm a bit over shock.
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