Reaching Out to the MTV Crowd

by Stephanie Ernst · 2009-02-26 07:22:00 UTC
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Among the topics being discussed in the vegan and animal rights blogosphere lately is Compassion Over Killing's latest set of efforts. One effort is taking a veg message to the MTV audience. Starting this week and for the next five, COK is again running two ads on MTV: "Exploring Your Food," in the style of a 1950s educational film (see embedded video below), and "A Side of Truth," taking place at a fast-food drive-through window and imparting the same message as the first ad. The ads have only 30 seconds to get a message out, so they just briefly mention some of the cruelties of factory egg, pig, and dairy farming in specific and then link to COK's sister site TryVeg.com.

I admit that because of people's mindsets these days and the active promotion of "humane" meat, "cage-free" eggs, and so on, these kinds of ads sometimes make me nervous because I worry that the focus on "factory farming" will just lead people to seek out non-factory-farmed products instead, without realizing that a number of the cruelties that go along with factory farming go along with all animal farming. These ads have just 30 seconds to make their point, so there's no time for deep exploration, but at some point, I'd really love to see COK or another nonprofit make another commercial like these, with the same brevity and perhaps even the same style, that focuses on issues that are true across animal ag. For example, the calf-taken-from-mother dairy issue that the ad points out is not a factory-farming-unique issue, but the mention of battery-caged hens could be changed, for example, to an alert about all the male chicks suffocated or ground up at birth or the practice of debeaking or even the transport and slaughter practices. And I also have mixed feelings about the word "vegetarian" rather than "vegan" being focused on in instances when "vegan" is what a group really means, but that's a topic for another day.

But I'm happy to say that COK reports good feedback on these campaigns (they've been airing such commercials since 2004), and it's great that a vegan message is getting airtime on MTV--that's pretty significant in and of itself. And many viewers whose attention is caught by the ads hopefully follow up by visiting TryVeg.com and learning more, including through reading the brief explanation of the "free-range myth" on that site. COK explains, "By targeting MTV’s teen and young adult viewing audience, we’re able to get the animals’ message directly to those shown by research to be the most receptive to vegetarian eating."

Stephanie Ernst wrote the original Animal Rights blog at Change.org until December 2009. She can now be found at Animal Rights & AntiOppression.
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