PETA pride themselves on their controversial advertising, designed to grab the attention of their audience with their graphic imagery which replaces animals with humans to show that eating meat, to them, is considered murder. However, their previous campaigns feature images of food appearing sexualised, often accompanied by a naked man or women, to tap into the insecurities of the public, guilting them into choosing vegetarianism. The final campaigns often appear to denegrate men and women, setting them up to appear as a piece of meat. The reasoning behind their approach to advertising is understandable, but is it necessary to involve people in it? The same innuendos and accusations could be made without including a discerning attitude in the form of a busty blonde.
The new campaign for PETA continues the humourous aspect to the previous adverts, but instead of turning it on it’s head and causing it to be potentially offensive, this campaign has strived to identify the stereotypes of gender that have been previously used and make them appear menial and unimportant. This was easy to be done given that animals possess the same body parts as humans, so a woman’s insecurity about her breasts and a man’s anxiety about his body can be acknowledged through the food and made light of.
The campaign has been mocked up on food orientated websites, advertising the benefits of vegetarianism to people buying their groceries online, or those accessing cooking websites to find recipes. It is designed to promote a healthy meat-free lifestyle to people who care about food. It also acknowledges the presentation of a sexual nature, given that this has proven in the past to be an effective advertising method, but the elimination of a man or a woman in the advert itself in turn hugely reduces the likelihood of causing offence.
The booklet that accompanies the campaign is designed to identify the problems in PETA’s previous adverts. It features a selection of their print ads over the past decade and points out the at times derogatory, at times graphic nature of the images they use. The campaigns are effectively designed to guilt the audience into fighting for animal rights, and while that is a good cause, it should be one close to the hearts of the protesters, and not gain their involvement through shame. On top of this, vegetarianism is intended as a choice that a person makes to not eat meat, and here it is used to scare the audience, leading a man to believe that eating meat causes erectile disfunction.
The series of posters is designed for print, but in a format that would ideally translate well as digital too. Given that in the 21st century advertising calls for multiple platforms, I wanted to allow for the poster designs to remain consistent when used in different contexts, as this would work as a banner on a food website, and also as a sidebar ad on Facebook. However, the initial aim was for print ads.
These designs would allow for PETA to recreate their image, as, in some of their previous ads, the constant guilt-tripping of the public with an issue like animal rights, almost leads them into choosing animal rights over human rights. The viewers were not given any choice but to think and feel the way PETA told them to. This campaign allows for the viewers to read what they want into it, while still maintaining the health aspect of the message.