“I wish we had this book 20 years ago, but we are very lucky to have it going forward. Being a practical person, I gravitate toward work that helps me move the ball forward, and certainly Animal Impact is a classic.”
- Esther Mechler, Founder, Spay/USA
“Effective animal advocacy is a difficult business. To move people with long-standing, entrenched attitudes and behaviors requires a deep understanding of what it takes to create change. This book will give you the insight you need to get the results you want.”
- Che Green, Founder and Executive Director, Humane Research Council
“When it comes to the mantra 'Work smarter, not harder,' Caryn Ginsberg is the ultimate guru. Whether you're expanding an existing program or starting on a new endeavor, it would be a mistake to do so without referring to Animal Impact before moving forward. The difference means getting the most for the animals!”
- Ruth Steinberger, Founder, SpayFIRST!
“This book is a must read for grassroots animal activists everywhere. If you simply read the book, you will become familiar with tried and true practices and be inspired by how they were successfully used by some of today's most respected animal activists. If you use the book as a study guide and apply the knowledge learned, you’ll get results you never dreamed possible.”
- Bob Leonard, Cofounder, Mid-Atlantic Animal Rights Coalition
“This book will assist all of us in achieving and exceeding goals to help create or change laws to protect all creatures great and small.”
- Belen Brisco, Animal Welfare Consultant
“This book is incredibly important and inspirational. This new approach promises real results based on a true understanding of what moves people to change their behavior. I look forward to sharing the ideas and experiences with fellow advocates.”
- Kelley Tish Baker, Animal Protection Advocate, Canada
“This is going to go down as the most practical book ever written for animal advocates.”
- Anthony Bellotti, Founder, White Coat Waste Project
“Every activist should have a copy!”
- Alexis C. Fox, Massachusetts State Director, The Humane Society of the United States
ANIMAL IMPACT
Secrets Proven to Achieve Results and Move the World
by
Caryn Ginsberg
Published
by Priority Ventures Group LLC at Smashwords
Copyright 2011 Caryn
Ginsberg.
www.priorityventures.com
Arlington, Virginia
Smashwords Edition
License Notes:
This ebook is licensed for your personal enjoyment
only. This ebook may not be re-sold or given away to other people. If
you would like to share this book with another person, please
purchase an additional copy for each recipient. If you’re reading
this book and did not purchase it, or it was not purchased for your
use only, then please return to Smashwords.com and purchase your own
copy. Thank you for respecting the hard work of this author.
Free companion
journal file available by request at
http://Animal-Impact.com/gift
For additional tips,
ideas, and recommendations for effective animal advocacy:
http://facebook.com/AnimalImpact
http://twitter.com/AnimalImpact
Copyright © 2011
Caryn Ginsberg.
All rights reserved.
No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, scanning, or otherwise, without the prior written permission of the author.
Send requests for
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ACHIEVEchange™ is a trademark of Priority Ventures Group LLC in the U.S. and other countries. All other trademarks are the property of their respective owners.
Limit of Liability/Disclaimer of Warranty: The publisher and the author make no representations or warranties with respect to the accuracy or completeness of the contents of this work and specifically disclaim all warranties, including without limitation warranties of fitness for a particular purpose. No warranty may be created or extended by sales or promotional materials. The advice and strategies contained herein may not be suitable for every situation. This work is sold with the understanding that the publisher is not engaged in rendering legal, accounting, or financial services. If such assistance is required, the services of a competent professional person should be sought. Neither the publisher nor the author shall be liable for damages arising herefrom. The fact that an organization or website is referred to in this work as a citation and/or a potential source of further information does not mean that the author or the publisher endorses the information the organization or website may provide or recommendations it may make. Further, readers should be aware that Internet websites listed may have changed or disappeared between the time this work was written and when it is read. People may no longer be with organizations indicated.
ISBN
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ISBN 978-0-9847660-0-0 (EPub)
Library of Congress Control Number: 2011943201
Priority Ventures
Group LLC
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• • • • • • •
Contents
How to Get the Most Out of This Book
• Paul Shapiro Learns to Maximize Results
• A Life-Changing Moment for Aimee St. Arnaud
• Brad Shear Uses Business Savvy to Get the Job Done
Chapter 2 - Why People Don't Get it and What You Can Do
• Meet Your Match® with Dr. Emily Weiss
• Teaching Campus Cafeterias a Thing or Two
Chapter 4 - Action and Audience
• A Song Converted Alexis C. Fox
• Mark Rifkin Answers “What’s in It for Me?” to Eat Veg
• Kelly Peterson Unlocks Attitudes to Unchains Dogs
• The Straight Scoop on Media from Alexis Raymond
Chapter 5 - Create Benefits and Cut Barriers
• Bringing Fun, Easy, and Popular to Laws for Animals
• Making Businesses Feel Good About Helping Animals
• Adele Douglass Helps People Vote with Their Wallets
• Creating a Win-Win for Birds and People
Chapter 6 - How to Say Something to Someone Instead of Nothing to Everyone
• Targeting a Nontraditional Audience by Reframing Vivisection
• Mentors Move Potential Vegans from Interest to Action
Chapter 7 - I Am Not My Target Audience
• Bob Leonard Gets a Surprising Answer
• Research Gets the Vote for Animals
• Finding Out What Will Motivate Spay/Neuter
Chapter 8 - Education Is Not Enough
• The Importance of Place - Esther Mechler
• Jennifer Fearing Finds New Partners for Farm Animals
• Spreading the Good Word for Adoption – PetSmart Charities
• Positive Engagement Under Pressure
Chapter 10 - Evaluate, Don't Guess
• Focusing on Results Inspires Innovation
• From Crisis to Constructive Feedback
• You Can’t Get There if You Don’t Start
Chapter 11 - Putting it All Together
• New Insight on Motivating Spay/Neuter
• Something to Celebrate in New Orleans
• Always be Tenacious – Steve Hindi
More than 80 advocates shared success stories and lessons learned that make what follows compelling and powerful. These participants contributed to help other advocates enhance their effectiveness. Thanks to all of them, especially to Heidi Prescott for her foreword. Many of these leaders were quick to mention that they had people working with them who were integral to their accomplishments.
An amazing group of advisors and readers provided extensive, thoughtful feedback. They are Anthony Bellotti, Alexis C. Fox, Marsha Rakestraw, Kathy Savesky, and Bert Troughton. Che Green, Carol Glasser, and Kelley Tish Baker offered valuable assistance on selected chapters. Joan Dempsey, Sarah Speare, and Khalif Williams gave useful input on direction. I appreciate the time, expertise, and enthusiasm that each of them contributed.
The names of most participants appear in the main text. Others not mentioned but helping include Alexandra Bornkessel, Janet Enoch, Dulce Espelosin, Laura Flannery, Nicole Forsyth, Daniel Hauff, Paulette Lincoln-Baker, Reed Mangels, Julia Peirce Marston, Julie McCord, Margaret Ostafin, Andrew Rowan, Martin Rowe, Nathan Runkle, Joellen Secondo, Geeta Seshamani, Lindsey Siferd, and Zia Terhune.
I am grateful to people who helped me get started in animal protection: Adele Douglass, Alex Hershaft, Beth Preiss, Kathy Savesky, Ken Shapiro, Kim Stallwood, Zoe Weil, and the team at Humane Society University.
Neil Trent, Susan Sherman, and Sally Harte at the Animal Welfare League of Arlington hosted the photo shoot by Tomerlin Photography. Joan Mancuso and Samantha Ring provided photos of “coverdog” Harry, an adoptee from SPCA Tampa Bay. Lama Takruri assisted me in designing the cover, while Ann Marie Amico gave advice on graphics.
I was fortunate to work with my editor (and Mom), Maxine Ginsberg, a professional journalist. Scott Armstrong sparked my start then gave structure, ideas, and how-tos for the process. Sherry Essig and Joel Garfinkle also provided professional guidance that helped me see the opportunity. Friends Lynita Clark and Robert Opalacz offered unwavering support throughout the process.
To you…
For believing in what’s possible and doing everything you can
to make it happen
To my
husband, Michael Levitin…
Who believes in me and makes it
possible for me to do what I can to help
I wish I'd known then what I know now and what you’re about to learn.
I'd been with The Fund for Animals for three years when we staged a protest at the Hegins pigeon shoot in 1992 in conjunction with many other organizations. At this horrific and cruel event, shooters took target practice on hundreds of birds as they were released from boxes. Many of them were killed instantly. Some fell to the ground injured. Local youth tore the heads off these birds to finish them off, or piled them in trash cans to suffocate. Other wounded birds flew into the trees to die over hours or days.
Our goal was to attract as many demonstrators and as much media as possible to bring public attention to this appalling practice. Along with the protests, acts of civil disobedience brought more visibility to the event.
Fifteen hundred protestors descended on the town. Over a hundred were arrested for running on the fields to free birds before they were shot. We met our goal.
Or did we? The event raised awareness. But the disorganized, angry crowd of demonstrators distracted attention from the birds and the cruelty of the shoot. The media coverage focused on the tension between shoot supporters and opponents. Few articles mentioned the birds and their plight.
More people attended the shoot the next year. Hegins residents and businesses enjoyed an economic boost as more attendees paid to watch the macabre festivity. People who hadn’t come previously showed up to see what the fuss was about. Even the Ku Klux Klan showed up to support the shoot. As more animals suffered and we were not getting anywhere, it was time to reassess.
The protest was a tactic [1] that emphasized conflict. To achieve our goal of stopping the shoot we needed a strategy, [2] a more comprehensive, integrated effort. We developed a plan to appeal to people's decency and compassion. Our approach addressed not just the public and the media but also elected officials.
For several years, we discouraged large-scale protests and instead focused on rescue and documenting evidence of violations of the cruelty statute. We sent trained veterinarians and volunteers to treat the wounded pigeons. They avoided any interactions with the crowd that could be perceived as violent or threatening. As a result, the media coverage changed significantly. Stories depicted the birds' suffering and violence by the shoot supporters. Reporters highlighted the senselessness of live pigeon shoots. Public sentiment began to shift.
We also strengthened our legislative outreach. Unfortunately, we may have actually missed opportunities to end the shoot earlier, because we didn't fully understand the needs of lawmakers. We didn't appreciate that inside negotiations and agreements are often essential to crafting a bill and garnering support.
However, our sophistication increased. We became very adept at targeting legislators who might have been on the fence by working with constituents and media in their districts. With more positive media, greater public support, and this thoughtful effort, we came within three votes of outlawing pigeon shoots in the state.
The campaign ultimately succeeded in the courts. Along the way, I gained experience about the importance of taking a strategic approach to make the very best use of our limited resources. It's not enough to want to do good for animals; we have to do good for animals. In addition to on-the-job training, I've read books about other movements, studied materials, and completed courses to discover the very best ways to affect change for animals.
In 2004 Mike Markarian, President of The Fund for Animals, and I asked Caryn Ginsberg to help us with strategic planning for our numerous campaigns and programs. At that time we felt like a great deal of our time and resources was spent “ambulance chasing” rather than proactively advancing an agenda. We certainly didn't have enough resources for everything we wanted to do, and we spread ourselves too thin trying to do too much.
Caryn guided a careful review of all our campaigns to determine which ones provided the best opportunities for us to help animals. In order to get the best results overall, we had to let go of some initiatives that were near and dear to our hearts. It wasn't easy. But just as we chose to abandon tactics that were unsuccessful during the Hegins campaign, we discontinued some projects that weren't the best use of time, energy, and funding. The disciplined approach she brought did more than help us evaluate our campaigns and programs. It became part of our ongoing work to choose new initiatives and craft effective strategies.
What you're about to read will help you develop approaches that work. You'll learn how to create change with the public, businesses, elected officials, government agencies, and other organizations. The information draws on Caryn's business background to reveal what companies know that we as animal advocates must know to motivate people to help rather than harm animals.
There are so many strategies and tactics in this book that I wish I'd known earlier in my animal protection work – perhaps more animals would have been saved from cruel treatment along the way. Thankfully, today young activists beginning their careers have access to information that will help them become more effective, leading to greater strides protecting animals, and there is greater focus today on planning.
This book includes comprehensive information that will help you get from point A to point B much quicker. My staff and I have used these methods in hundreds of campaigns focusing on issues such as dogfighting, cockfighting, fox-penning, canned hunts, fur, factory farming, and more.
You will find the information in this book useful and easy to implement. Refer to it often to plan any program, campaign, communications effort, personal outreach activity, or other initiative. Whether you are an individual advocate or part of a group, new to animal protection or a seasoned veteran, the approaches here can help you be more effective.
We share a passion for animals. I'm delighted that Caryn has written this book to share with you some of the very best ways to make the world better for them.
- Heidi Prescott, Senior Vice President, Campaigns, The Humane Society of the United States
Courtney L. Dillard originally recounted and analyzed the Hegins campaign in detail in “Civil Disobedience: A Case Study in Factors of Effectiveness,” Society & Animals, Vol. 10, No. 1 [3]
You care deeply about helping animals. For all that you give and do, surely you deserve the very best help to be as influential as possible.
You can get better results from the time, energy, and money you already have. It doesn't matter where you're starting from today or which issue matters most to you. You can improve your impact whether you are a lifelong animal advocate or have gotten involved more recently.
Like many people new to animal protection work, I initially tried a variety of efforts: writing letters, staffing outreach tables, leafleting, helping in an organization's mailroom, visiting my political representatives, and occasionally attending a protest. Although I enjoyed taking action to spread animal-friendly messages, I didn't have the satisfaction of seeing much impact for my time and effort.
It wasn't that such activities are unproductive. Rather some of them seemed more useful than others. When I tabled to promote vegetarian eating at health fairs, for example, many people came to the table, eager to learn more about how they could take steps to eat more plant-based foods. When I spent time on Washington, D.C.'s National Mall, fewer of my interactions with passing tourists and residents were worthwhile. More often than not, it seemed, I ended up speaking with at least one animal-farmer here on vacation – not the most likely candidate for change.
While I enjoyed spending time with my fellow volunteers in both situations, I felt very differently about the two types of tabling. The health events were energizing. The time passed quickly and I was excited about the enthusiastic reaction I got. The Mall events left me drained.
I quickly decided that if I only had a certain amount of time to spend to help animals, I wanted to use that time as effectively as possible. I had a wealth of professional experience motivating people to take action. Could what I knew about strategy in the for-profit sector help people create more change for animals?
It could and it has. For over ten years I've had the privilege of helping people use proven techniques to accomplish more for animals. Through projects, as a speaker, and in articles, I've reached individual activists, volunteers, staff members at organizations large and small, board members, and funders. They have used the approaches I've shown them to get better results faster.
Now I've created a simple, powerful framework called the ACHIEVEchange system that you can use again and again for your personal activism, local programs, online presence, or national campaigns. The system and the detailed explanations combine my strategy background, my insight from working with animal protection advocates, and lessons from leading thinkers on creating change. These ideas can transform the effectiveness of your advocacy …and how you feel about the time you spend helping animals.
You'll see exactly how to work with these methods. I've included success stories from individuals, small groups, and leading organizations. These examples span the full spectrum of animal advocacy: sheltering, food issues, wildlife, and more. Although most of the stories are from the United States, some are from other countries. The principles apply around the world.
It doesn't matter if you agree with the issue in an example. Open admission shelters and no-kill facilities can learn from what the other does well. Promoting any form of vegetarianism shares much in common with advocating for more humane methods of raising animals for food. Advocates can use similar approaches to gain welfare reforms and to work toward abolition. Whether you refer to “pets” or “companion animals,” “farm animals” or “farmed animals,” I invite you to focus on lessons learned and how you can use them to create the change you want. As Timy Sullivan of PetFix Northeast Ohio notes:
If we partner only with those who are already on the same page, we… miss valuable opportunities to teach and learn. [4]
The people who contributed stories are not necessarily on the same page with each other or with me on every issue, tactic, or philosophy. Yet, they agreed to take part in this collaboration to help convey an approach that can have a profound impact on our progress.
Of course, it was not possible to include every effective organization and individual. There are numerous other groups and people whose work I respect and that could have provided additional examples of top-notch advocacy.
Sometimes we'll look at less successful endeavors and how using the ACHIEVEchange system could have made a difference. These situations can offer our most powerful learning opportunities, so I heartily thank the individuals and organizations that have shared them. They'll tell you how they think they could have done better. When I point out ideas, I am building lessons learned from their work, not criticizing it.
Nor should you infer any criticism or feel any guilt if you look back at some of your past efforts and think you might have approached them another way. The poet Maya Angelou said some variation of “when we know better, we do better.”
I applaud you for your commitment to being the most effective advocate for animals that you can be. I look forward to your success stories from using these techniques.
How to Get the Most Out of This Book
Please don't read this book
I like to joke that for someone who's read as many self improvement books as I have, I don’t seem to have improved that much.
I finally figured out that that's because while I may read the books, I quickly forget most of what I've learned. Worse, I rarely put much of it into practice.
How about you? Have you read other books to improve your effectiveness in animal advocacy? How much of a difference have they made in what you're doing and the results you're getting? If you haven't read other books on animal advocacy, consider books you may have read to make other changes in your life, such as for diet, exercise, time management, organization, or financial management.
Fortunately for us all, there's a whole field about adult learning. It seems that as we get older, those tried and true methods of listening to lectures and reading books aren't always as effective as they used to be. The design of this book and the tips below will help you engage in ways that enhance the learning process and the results you’ll get for yourself and animals.
1. Complete the activities. You’ll find activities and questions to help you understand and apply the material. Take your time to think through them carefully. If you can't resist reading ahead, please plan a second pass to consider them in more depth. (Either way, reading the book multiple times can greatly enhance your new capabilities.)
2. Take notes. Writing down your responses, as well as other key impressions, will also help you retain more of the information. You can request a free companion journal file, a $9.95 value, at http://Animal-Impact.com/gift. Or just use a notebook. You'll have a summary document that's easy to revisit to remind yourself about takeaways that you want to act on in the future.
3. Generate ideas. As you're learning new points, jot down your thoughts on how to apply them in your advocacy. Don't worry about creating a perfect plan. Just capture ideas that you can use later.
4. Buddy up. Bert Troughton of the ASPCA notes that one of the best ways adults learn is through conversation. Ask a friend or colleague to read the book as well. By discussing the topics and how to apply them, you'll magnify your insight and ideas many times over.
5. Take action. In the final chapter, Getting Started, you'll find more about how to move from reading to doing. This is your jumping-off point to make what you've learned about more effective advocacy becomes part of your every day efforts. The Resources section at the end lists materials you might like to explore. When you request your free companion journal file, you'll gain access to online links to many of them.
These are just a few ways you can maximize what you get out of this book. Consider what works for you based on your learning style. Are you audio-inclined? Read out loud, if not the whole book, at least the points at the beginning of each chapter. Does it help you to form vivid pictures in your mind of how it would look to put these ideas into action? Would you do better to stand or move around while recapping what's most meaningful to you at the end of each chapter?
What you know now has helped you get here; what you continue to learn will get you where you are going.
- Ruth Thirtle, Business Development Specialist (proud adopter from DCH Animal Rescue, New South Wales, Australia)
You hold in your hands information that can transform your advocacy. I hope you'll put it to work to get the results you and the animals deserve.
In this chapter:
• Faced with widespread animal suffering, resistance to change, and often-powerful opposition, we need to work smarter; the same old approaches will continue to yield the same old results.
• Nonprofits, government, and innovative individuals have adapted marketing approaches to advance change, such as reducing smoking and drunk driving, increasing voting and exercising, and fighting poverty and homelessness.
• This type of marketing is called social marketing. For our purposes, we can define social marketing as the use of commercial marketing approaches to influence people to voluntarily adopt a behavior that helps animals.
—Social media is just one ingredient in social marketing’s recipe for success.
• Some animal protection organizations are using social marketing to deploy common advocacy techniques, including social media, to greater effect.
• We in the animal welfare community need to harness social marketing’s power on a much larger scale if we want to see real results.
• • • • • • •
Every day advocates invest money, time, expertise, and energy to make the world better for animals. We achieve victories on some issues in some places, but experience setbacks elsewhere.
Have you talked to people, staffed a table at an event, handed out leaflets, attended a protest, used social media, advertised, run a campaign, or done other outreach? If so, you’ve probably experienced frustration when someone (or almost everyone) ignores or rebuffs your plea to help.
You work hard to get people to be kind and compassionate to animals. Why don't they always do what you ask?
Big Problems Are Hard Problems
It’s very difficult to overcome societal norms and personal inertia. Unfortunately, animal suffering is vast and entrenched.
Consider these recent figures. In the United States alone:
• More than a million lab animals endured experimentation in 2009. Seventy-six thousand of them experienced painful procedures without receiving relief. [5]
• About 3 million healthy and adoptable cats and dogs were euthanized in shelters in 2010. [6] Others suffer in the streets or are victims of cruelty and neglect.
• 12.5 million people aged 16 years old and older hunted a variety of animals in 2006. [7] Over 100 million animals were killed for “sport” annually in the 1990s. [8]
• Nine billion-plus cows, pigs, sheep, chickens, turkeys, and ducks were killed for food in 2009. [9] For many of them, along with hundreds of millions of egg-laying hens, life pre-slaughter is a torturous existence with dark, crowded, unsanitary housing and terrifying, painful procedures.
These figures include only a few of the countless and varied ways animals suffer in just one country. Globally and for all types of animals, the magnitude of the problem is almost unimaginable.
We Face Powerful Opposition
The people, industries, and institutions working against the humane treatment of animals typically enjoy significant advantages, including far greater resources.
Even the largest organizations in our field are quite small compared to the entities that oppose them. For example:
• Sales of animals in 2011, including by pet shops and breeders, will total more than $2 billion, according to the American Pet Products Association. [10] That’s over eight times the combined budgets that the American Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals (ASPCA) and The Humane Society of the United States (The HSUS) had in 2009 to address a wide range of animal protection issues. [11]
• U.S. fur sales were $1.3 billion in 2010. [12]
• The annual budget of the National Rifle Association was $220 million in 2010. [13]
• The dairy industry has spent as much as $180 million a year on milk promotion. [14] That's more than the combined 2009 budgets for Farm Sanctuary, Physicians Committee for Responsible Medicine, Compassion Over Killing, Vegetarian Resource Group, Farm Animal Rights Movement (FARM), and Mercy For Animals. [15]
As you know, money brings power and influence. Industry can afford big advertising campaigns, publicity efforts to reach the media, and lobbyists to sway legislators.
We Have to Be Smarter
Simply showing up and kicking the ball harder and running faster isn't going to make you a winner. [16]
- Chris Cade, Think Without the Box
No matter how passionately we feel, how many times we repeat our arguments, or how strong the language we use, we may achieve little. We must become experts in how to create change. Many animal protection advocates are now employing more sophisticated approaches than in the past.
It’s not all about money. Just like the story of David and Goliath, savvy animal protection advocates have moved giants like McDonald’s, Trader Joe’s, Hollywood celebrities, the U.S. Department of Agriculture, and the U.S. Congress to act for animals. In describing the historic campaign against Revlon by renowned animal activist Henry Spira, Peter Singer, author of Animal Liberation, asks:
Could there be a more unequal contest than this one, which pitted a high school teacher working out of his own apartment against the flagship of the cosmetics industry? [17]
- Peter Singer, Ethics into Action
Through careful strategy and persistent execution, Spira persuaded Revlon to provide $750,000 for The Rockefeller University to launch a multi-year effort to find alternatives to testing cosmetics in the eyes of rabbits. The campaign ultimately yielded another $1 million from Avon, Bristol Myers, Estée Lauder, Max Factor, Chanel, and Mary Kay to create the Center for Alternatives to Animal Testing at Johns Hopkins University. [18]
While successes like these may garner widespread attention, equally important victories are happening at the local level. The shelter increasing adoptions, the activist winning a ban on circuses with animals in her community, and the person getting more veg options in his office cafeteria are all making important gains.
To do more with less, individual advocates, grassroots groups, community organizations, and national leaders have learned to work smarter. Many of them are borrowing from what businesses have known for years.
• • • • • • •
Paul Shapiro Learns to Maximize Results
Paul Shapiro grew up in an animal-loving household where the dogs were considered part of the family. His mother served on the board of directors of a local humane society and helped out at the shelter several days a week. After seeing videos of slaughter plants when he was 13, Paul became vegetarian (and later vegan) and began volunteering for animal advocacy organizations.
In high school, Paul started an animal protection club. The group brought in speakers and videos, and offered veg feed-ins for classmates. The club soon grew beyond the school grounds to become the D.C. grassroots group Compassion Over Killing (COK).
Paul believes that some of COK's first work was not as productive as it could have been.
There were several years that we did things that felt good to do, but weren't actually effective in helping animals. I'm thinking about some of the raucous protests. We also did various sit-ins that led to the arrest of some folks. The intent was certainly to help animals, but I don't think we were introspective about whether we were tangibly helping animals.
Norm Phelps, former spiritual outreach director of The Fund for Animals, inspired Paul and his colleagues to become “teachers rather than fighters.” COK shifted its focus to helping people in a more positive manner, such as through feed-ins and getting more veg options in restaurants.
Becoming less confrontational and more strategic gave Paul an edge in creating change. His successes have ranged from getting restaurants to put veg options on their menus to persuading Ben & Jerry's to switch to cage-free eggs. First with COK and now with The HSUS, his victories have helped millions of animals.
Paul hopes other animal advocates will learn from his early mistakes:
Too often animal activists do things that we initially feel good doing, but aren't necessarily the most effective way to help animals. We should treat [our advocacy] as seriously as if we were doing this for our own business that was intended to make money.
Applying business principles is a good way to create tangible results for animals.
• • • • • • •
You might think we’re not anything like businesses. Our mission is to help animals, and a company’s goal is to make money. You may feel motivated by a call to serve and believe corporate employees only care about salary, status, and other personal outcomes.
What we have in common, though, is the need to get people to take action. For example:
• Animal protection advocates want people to adopt from a shelter or rescue group. Pet shops, breeders, and other for-profit outlets induce them to buy instead.
• We ask homeowners and local governments to use non-lethal approaches to deal with wild animals. Wildlife control firms convince them to use lethal methods.
• Activists endorse eating a plant-based diet or at least more humanely produced food. The meat, egg, and dairy industries promote consuming their products without regard for animal treatment.
If you think about the statistics we reviewed on the pervasive use of animals, it’s clear which side is winning – business. Fortunately, the same approaches that businesses use can help us help animals. We can apply these methods in a positive, ethical way. Leading advocates are already doing so and getting better results.
“Good Marketing” Is Not an Oxymoron
One of the most important factors that separates business success from failure is effective marketing.
Many people equate marketing with advertising, especially with the advertising from enormous corporations. It's bad. Nonprofits can't afford to do it.
Advertising is part of marketing, but it's not all of it. Marketing is a process that businesses use to motivate people to enter into an exchange, usually spending money to get goods or services. Elements of the marketing process include:
• Setting goals
• Determining whom to serve
• Understanding what they want
• Developing goods and services (product)
• Setting charges (price)
• Selling through stores, online channels or other outlets (place)
• Creating and disseminating persuasive messages (promotion)
• Measuring results of campaigns and programs
We can use a similar marketing process to create an exchange. We want people to exchange their animal-unfriendly behaviors for animal-friendly ones. Using these marketing steps enhances our effectiveness with the money we have.
Isn’t marketing about manipulation? Well, the company that makes the dog food you've chosen or promotes dissection alternatives is as engaged in marketing as are businesses that sell products you may dislike. Even a neighborhood lemonade stand engages in marketing.
Marketing is no more inherently “evil” than a knife. You can use a knife to whittle a toy, chop ingredients, or survive in the wilderness. But you can also slash a painting, kill someone, or cut the carelessly placed finger. In the same way, marketing is a neutral tool wielded for benefit or harm depending on the motivation and skill of those who use it.
We need to work as hard and, more important, as smart as the people on Wall Street work to sell stocks and as hard as advertisers work to sell the latest SUV.
Although our goals are different, the mechanisms of reaching other people and selling the message (in our case, of animal liberation) are well established.... [19]
- Bruce Friedrich, “Effective Advocacy: Stealing from the Corporate Playbook”
Marketing Is a Tool for Social Change
In the last forty years, public health and environmental organizations have adapted what businesses know about marketing. They’ve prompted people to:
• Stop smoking
• Avoid driving drunk
• Recycle
• Exercise
• Vote
Individual advocates are also advancing exciting new initiatives based on principles of achieving behavior change.
• Canadian Shawn Ahmed left graduate school to start The Uncultured Project, an effort to reshape how people respond to global poverty and to bring concrete improvements to Bangladesh. [20]
• Mark Horvath, a former Hollywood insider who has also been homeless, created Invisible People to engage citizens, communities, and governments to take action to help the homeless in the United States. [21]
• Noha El-Bassiouny of Egypt markets to marketers! She launched Ethics-Based Marketing to influence people in companies, associations, and universities to use ethical principles to guide their marketing actions. [22]
There's a special name for marketing that's used to achieve societal good rather than to make money. It's called “social marketing.” Social marketing means:
The use of marketing principles and techniques to influence a target audience to voluntarily accept, reject, modify, or abandon a behavior for the benefit of individuals, groups, or society as a whole. [23]
- Philip Kotler, Ned Roberto, and Nancy Lee, Social Marketing: Improving the Quality of Life
For our purposes, we can define social marketing as:
The use of commercial marketing approaches to influence people to voluntarily adopt a behavior that helps animals.
“Influencing people to voluntarily adopt behavior” can include not only getting the public to make new personal choices but also…
• Moving businesses and government agencies to change policy
• Persuading legislators to vote for pro-animal measures
• Engaging media to pursue animal stories
• Motivating supporters to volunteer time and donate
Why Haven’t We Done More Social Marketing?
In their classic article “Social Marketing: An Approach to Planned Social Change,” Philip Kotler and Gerald Zaltman described social marketing’s purpose as “to help translate present social action efforts into more effectively designed and communicated programs that elicit desired audience response.” [24] That article launched social marketing as a discipline in 1971.
The animal protection movement in the United States at that time consisted primarily of small, local organizations, often led by animal care or control experts rather than people with experience motivating people to change. The HSUS was still a fairly small organization. [25] Best Friends Animal Society (Best Friends) and People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals (PETA) did not exist.
Leaders in the emerging animal rights movement in the 1970s and 1980s were often strong personalities more prone to “charge the barricades” than to study the subtleties of influence strategies. [26] That wasn’t necessarily all wrong. Alex Hershaft, President of FARM, describes three stages of issues within social movements. In the first, the Alert Stage, activities that draw attention are important to create public awareness. Heightening the visibility of animal issues was, therefore, valuable.
However, for a movement to succeed, it can't simply continue to generate awareness It must move on to the second stage, Discussion, where it builds agreement and then to the third stage, Reform, where it achieves action.
The biggest pitfall [of the second stage, Discussion,] is that a lot of us are still stuck in the alerting stage…. We'll be in a situation where people want to come and learn more about our issues and we're still screaming, 'Meat is murder' and 'You're a puppy killer.' That's not very conducive to coming up and learning more about vivisection or eating animals. We have to be very careful. Are we trying to get a rise out of people or are we trying to inform them?
….
The purpose [of the Reform Stage] is to introduce lasting change, to actually bring about changes in behavior…. [T}he pitfall in our movement at this stage is that a lot of us lose interest…. [27]
- Alex Hershaft, FARM
Some animal advocates have been slow to adjust their approach. Passion for animals and conviction that we’re “right” can obscure the need to refine our methods. [28] The mistaken belief that social marketing is only for large organizations with bigger budgets discourages individuals and local groups.
However, simply adopting a social marketing mindset can dramatically enhance your work. You'll soon learn more about animal advocates who are using social marketing to make a difference on their own and in organizations such as Albert Schweitzer Foundation (Germany), Animal Welfare League of Arlington, ASPCA, Compassion in World Farming (UK), Compassion Over Killing, Delaware Action for Animals, The HSUS, Mercy For Animals, PetSmart Charities, Save Animals from Exploitation (SAFE, New Zealand), Vegetarian Resource Group, and Wildlife SOS (India). Outcomes have included:
• Increasing spaying and neutering
• Gaining veg options in restaurants and cafeterias
• Securing safer passage for wildlife
• Stopping plans to expand beaver hunting
…and much more.
Social Marketing Is Not Social Media
These days many people confuse social marketing with social media. Social media includes Facebook, Twitter, blogs, and other online communications that enable user-generated content and peer-to-peer sharing, often in real time. That’s only a small part of social marketing, which existed long before social media.
Social marketing consultant Mike Newton-Ward compares social media to a carrot in the stir-fry of social marketing. [29] Other ingredients come from business marketing, including defining:
• What behavior you want people to adopt
• Which people you’re addressing
• What they want
• What to say and how to say it (promotion)
• What else you need to do (product, price, place)
• How you’ll know if your efforts are working
Social media is part of promotion to support the success of programs, campaigns, and other outreach. Even if you are an individual who blogs or works largely through Facebook and Twitter, social marketing will help you get better results from your efforts.
Social media without a strategy is a trick not a tool. So you have to present with excellence, and you have to have goals, reasons, and a strategy to make it effective.
- Mark Horvath, Invisible People [30]
• • • • • • •
A Life-Changing Moment for Aimee St. Arnaud
Aimee St. Arnaud knew as early as age six that she wanted to do something to help animals. As a teen, she volunteered at a shelter and for a wildlife ballot initiative.
To find work in the field, Aimee attended conferences and made sure to introduce herself to people. She landed a position with her local humane society after the executive director noticed her persistence in volunteering and attending events. Through additional networking and her ongoing work, she was invited to join Best Friends, where she was involved in the No More Homeless Pets campaign.
Conferences were the place not only to make contacts but also to get new ideas. At a Spay/USA gathering, Aimee heard Kathy Savesky talk about social marketing. When Kathy was executive director of the Peninsula Humane Society (PHS) in San Mateo, California, she read Marketing Social Change: Changing Behavior to Promote Health, Social Development, and the Environment by Alan Andreasen, another leader in the social marketing field. She used what she learned about social marketing to save more animals at PHS. She then pioneered social marketing in the animal protection field, including through her breakthrough article “Selling Your Organization's Messages.” [31]
Aimee described the session as life-changing. Social marketing offered a powerful new approach for helping animals.
When we look at animal welfare, it seems big and overwhelming. We look at [it] as being so different from anything else. Sometimes we get paralyzed....
We don't like to be thought of as a business. But if you look at the different social movements and businesses, they're very aware of [what motivates people to change.] They do a lot of research. It's important to start looking outside our field....
We can do all the programs in the world, but if we're not reaching people with the right message in the right language, we're never going to [achieve] what we want. If we were McDonald's or Target, we'd know how to reach them.
Aimee has put social marketing to work on many fronts, including as founder of the spay/neuter group Humane Ohio. Social marketing taught her and colleagues to …
re-think our judgments because we were operating on a premise from years in this field that people didn't care and didn't want to fix their pets. We've come to realize that the majority of people do want to fix their pets and are grateful for our services. They were facing barriers like cost and accessibility that made it hard for them. We've removed those barriers by doing special promotions, providing transport, and using a variety of ways to reach them from social media, such as Facebook and craigslist, to traditional media, including TV, radio and print.
We have realized we also need to get out in the community, so we do a lot of grassroots door to door and events in the areas we are trying to reach. If you aren't talking to the people you are trying to reach, how do you get to know what motivates them?
It can be uncomfortable to step outside our [comfort] zone, but incredibly rewarding. As a result, we currently fix over 12,000 animals a year and have a three-month waiting list, with plans to expand to 15,000 a year because of demand.
• • • • • • •
Whatever You Call It, It Works
Some of the success stories you'll read in the pages ahead are from people who, like Aimee and Paul, think explicitly about using practices from social marketing or business. Other examples come from people who don't think that way about what they do, but go about their efforts with similar consideration and insight. The “Ten Ways to Make a Difference” that Peter Singer summarizes from Henry Spira in Ethics into Action are consistent with social marketing. Spira's approach came from experience in a variety of social movements.
Are you enthusiastic about marketing, especially social marketing, as a powerful tool to help animals? If you’re still uncomfortable with the term, please don’t let that stand in your way. I've taken key points from social marketing and organized them into an easy-to-remember ACHIEVEchange system. You can use it to plan and execute effective initiatives for animals. The chapters that follow explain the framework and how to put it to work to enhance your advocacy.
• • • • • • •
Action and Audience
Our goal is changing behavior. Think of people as customers for change and address their “What's in it for me?”
Create Benefits and Cut Barriers
People change their behavior when they perceive the benefits of doing so to exceed the barriers.
How to Say Something to Someone Instead of Nothing to Everyone [32]
One size does not fit all. Choose the best people to target and tailor your efforts to them.
I Am Not My Target Audience
You don't think the same way as the people you're trying to influence. Listen to them to understand the best motivators.
Education Isn't Enough
It takes more than telling people about a problem to inspire them to act. Build your efforts considering product, price, place, and partnerships as well as promotion.
Voice Matters
How you say it is as important as what you say. Positive change begins with you.
Evaluate, Don't Guess
We have to determine if we're getting results and learn from our experience to do better.
If Madison Avenue can get us to buy things that are too expensive, don't taste good, and make us sick, why can't we use those same secrets to get people to do things that are good for them and animals?
- Kathy Savesky
• • • • • • •
Brad Shear Uses Business Savvy to Get the Job Done
Brad Shear worked in restaurants after college to pay the bills, but quit because it wasn't fulfilling. He answered an ad for kennel and front desk help at a shelter. He worked his way up to front desk supervisor and later to director of operations at a larger shelter.
When Brad joined Mohawk Hudson Humane Society (MHHS) as executive director, he set about enhancing the organization's image, a key aspect of marketing. At the time, there wasn't a lot of attention paid to the experience visitors were having at the shelter. Facility odors and procedures that were normal for staff and volunteers were off-putting to would-be adopters.
With his early experience in the hospitality industry, Brad knew that customer experience was critical. In an earlier position with Boulder Valley Humane Society, he'd partnered with the Dumb Friends League (Denver) to become an instructor for a customer service training program that a pet food manufacturer helped develop. He brought this training to MHHS. He also made people skills a key criterion for new hires, favoring applicants with customer service backgrounds from any field.
As a result, the organization became more customer-focused and improved its reputation. In 2010 when the ASPCA announced its new $100K Challenge, with a cash award for the U.S. shelter entrant that most increased the number of lives saved compared to the prior year, Brad felt MHHS was ready to tap into community pride and take its place among the leading humane groups nationally.
To do so, he once again turned to best practices from business. Brad and his team considered which local organization, in any industry, did the best job of marketing and advertising. They approached the law firm of Martin, Harding & Mazzotti LLP for advice on new ways to motivate adoptions. The partners not only agreed to help but also brought in their advertising agency and worked with a TV station to produce and distribute a 30-second public service announcement. One partner visited area radio stations to talk about hosting an adoption clinic and urged other businesses to do the same.
Brad and his team even borrowed from the famous “Got Milk?” campaign. Soon their “Got Pets?” signs, like the ones you see for political candidates, were all over New York’s Capital Region.
MHHS adopted out nearly 400 more animals for August to October 2010 compared with the same period in 2009. Brad and his team finished in the top 10 for lives saved in the Challenge. MHHS was also among the three finalists for the $25,000 community engagement prize, beating out many larger shelters on both dimensions.
• • • • • • •
Achieve Impact
Please turn your new insight into action and impact by answering the following questions before you move ahead. I suggest you do this at the end of each chapter to make sure you capture what you think can best help you help animals. Remember you can request your free journal file at http://Animal-Impact.com/gift that lists the questions in each chapter.
1. What are two examples of marketing you see around you? Consider any effort that’s intended to influence you to buy a product or service, engage in healthy behavior, adopt an environmentally-friendly practice, or take a civic action. You’ll probably find you’re on the receiving end of a lot of marketing from businesses, nonprofits, and government.
2. In each of these two examples, is your reaction positive or negative? What makes it so… the source? …the product or behavior that's promoted? …the message or images used? …something else?
3. If you reacted negatively to how the marketing was done in one of your examples, how can you avoid having a similar impact in your advocacy? For example, if you felt a marketing effort was disrespectful, how can you ensure that you come across as respectful?
Also note key points or ideas you got from this chapter.
Chapter 2 - Why People Don't Get it and What You Can Do
In this chapter:
• Being at the receiving end of a hypothetical advocacy campaign provides insight on how to be more effective.
• Introduction to the ACHIEVEchange system
• • • • • • •
Whether you're helping dogs and cats in your community, advocating for businesses to change their policies, pressing for government to pass laws, or working on any other of the seemingly endless animal protection challenges, you want to know what to say, how you should say it, and what else you should do.
But before we talk about you, let's talk about the people you're trying to influence on behalf of animals: family, friends, colleagues, community members, businesspeople, elected officials, government workers, or any other individual.
You know, THOSE people. Those people who listen to you or read your materials about dog and cat overpopulation, puppy mills, factory farming, fur, vivisection, shark finning, or other animal use and abuse and STILL keep doing what they're doing. It's painful. It's so obvious to you that what's going on is cruel and has to stop, but they won't get on board.
You may feel disappointed, discouraged, upset, or even angry at their seeming indifference to suffering. Do you complain to your fellow animal advocates about how horrible these people are? Maybe you just throw up your hands and wonder what is WRONG with them!
Why don't they get it?
Put the (Non-leather) Shoe on the Other Foot
You're used to talking to others about animal issues. You know how strongly you feel. How would you feel, though, if someone were talking to you or sharing written materials about a different type of issue?
Let's find out. You'll get some great insight on your advocacy and how to have more impact.
Two examples follow. They are:
• Asking you to stop shopping at malls or large retailers for clothing
• Telling you to eat only 100% raw vegan food
We'll refer back to this activity throughout the book. So please take a few minutes to consider the examples and jot down some notes on your response. You'll learn the most by doing both examples and truly engaging. I hope you'll have some fun with it, too!
For each example, imagine that someone is speaking to you or that you're reading a flier or website. Be very aware of what you're thinking as you read the appeal to change. You'll find questions following each example to help you evaluate the experience.
(Do you already avoid buying clothes from traditional sources and eat 100% raw vegan food? If so, think about another potentially world-friendly or personally beneficial activity that you haven't undertaken, such as giving up your car, composting, installing solar panels, or working out regularly. What might an advocate for that behavior say to you?)
• • • • • • •
Example 1: The Evils of Shopping at Malls and Large Retailers
Shopping at the mall or in national retailers hurts the environment and people. It's important that you never buy clothing in these stores!
You may think cotton is 100% natural, but it actually depletes the soil. Unless it's organic, it's probably been treated with pesticides. These pesticides, along with fertilizers, end up in the water.