The latest anti-wool advertisement by animal liberation activists is a big budget marketing campaign aimed at eliciting shock and guilt from an ignorant audience.
Narelle Lancaster, a lecturer in the school of media and communication at RMIT University, Victoria, says People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals’ (PETA) anti-wool campaign has deployed the longest-running and sexiest stunts known in the advertising industry to attract attention.
The latest campaign features Joanna Krupa, from The Real Housewives of Miami, standing naked and includes the slogan: “Wool: The Naked Truth. There’s nothing warm and cuddly about wool”.
In the image, Krupa, who appears bruised and bloodied, holds a battered fake lamb. Ms Lancaster said the campaign used nudity to capture public attention, together with videos of animal cruelty aimed at shaming consumers into behavioural change.
“They are a well-oiled organisation – this organisation has strategy and technique, and a big budget for finely executed, strategic campaigns,” she said.
She compared PETA’s campaign, which urges viewers to boycott the fibre for synthetic materials, to shock-factor ads by Transport Accident Commission.
Despite the YouTube clip reaching 3.2 million viewers, Ms Lancaster said woolgrowers should not worry about the campaign’s damage.
“Maybe it is time to create a response that is not knee-jerk, but reveals a better understanding of the industry and shows the implications to these campaigns,” she said.
Photographer Jacqui Bateman used humour to counteract the campaign, with a nude photograph of shearer Daniel Telfer which reached a Facebook audience of 700,000.
Rural Miss blog writer, Gemma Lee Steere, also shared an image of her hugging a shorn sheep to her 21,000 followers, which reached more than 500,000 people and was shared 3000 times in one day.
Ms Steere, who runs a Merino and crossbred flock in Western Australia, said the strongest form of industry defence was through promotion and awareness.
“A lot of people are uninformed and uneducated as to what goes into growing wool and the shearing industry,” she said.
“We can’t ignore it so we need to hit their foulness with truth – if we don’t react, people will believe their lies.”
WoolProducers Australia chief executive, Jo Hall, called the ad “deceitful and misrepresentative” of the usual practice of shearing.
PETA Australia’s campaign co-ordinator, Claire Fryer, said shearers’ yield payments encouraged careless work, leaving little consideration for the animal’s welfare.