Written by PETA
As anyone who's seen our Super Bowl commercial can attest, we know a good ad when we see one. We can also spot a bad advertisement, and when we do, we're not shy about sharing our feelings. Every time we see that a company has incorporated a negative—or positive—message about animals into an ad, we immediately contact it with a nomination for our annual Litterbox or Glitterbox awards. We've sifted through the finalists, and we're excited to announce 2008's winners. Drum roll, please …
In the Litterbox category, for ads that stink:
The Golden Scoop goes to … Levi Strauss & Co., for exploiting an orangutan in its recent viral video. Undercover investigations at primate training facilities reveal that trainers rip baby great apes away from their mothers and kick, punch, and beat them in order to force them to perform confusing and uncomfortable "tricks" that they don't understand.
The Silver Scoop goes to … Kansas City International Airport, for its use of a chimpanzee, Kenzie, in an ad that never should have made it off the ground. Chimpanzees can live to be more than 60 years old, but by the age of 8, they become too strong to be handled and are often discarded at roadside zoos, where they can languish in squalor for decades.
And the Bronze Scoop goes to … Citigroup for featuring a live elephant in its commercial "Safari," which showed an elephant sitting on the hood of a family's rental car. Animal trainers want you to think that elephants are treated with love and care, but if that were the truth, don't you think that elephant trainers would be carrying bags of peanuts instead of bullhooks?
Now, for the best ads of the year:
The Golden Scoop goes to … Bridgestone and its ad agency the Richards Group for a charming commercial showing that—thanks to dependable tires—animals don't have to be the victims of drivers' love for the open road. Cars kill an estimated 1 million animals every day in the U.S. alone.
The Silver Scoop goes to … ADT and its ad agency W.B. Doner & Company for showing that the company's Fire Protection Program saves human and animal lives. Dogs are part of the family for about 45 percent of Americans, and it's important to make sure that we take all the necessary steps to protect animals in emergencies.
The Bronze Scoop goes to … Architex International, for an ad promoting the company's authentic faux-leather line, which features four cows and the tagline "Hey, it's no skin off our backs." As if producing this excellent cruelty-free product wasn't enough, Architex goes above and beyond in this ad to let consumers know why faux is the only way to go.
Here's hoping that all companies decide to follow the lead of progressive companies like Bridgestone, ADT, and Architex International and think outside the "litterbox" with their new ads in 2009. We'll be watching.
Written by Liz Graffeo
Obviously, Veggie Love would have been the best Super Bowl commercial of all time. But because NBC rejected PETA's ad, we had to leave it off our list of the most appealing and most appalling commercials that aired during this year's game:
The Best:
Bridgestone: In Bridgestone's Super Bowl entry, Mr. and Mrs. Potato Head are out for a country drive, swerving around a curvy mountain road. With Mrs. Potato Head busy screaming at Mr. Potato Head, he turns a blind corner and almost runs into a flock of sheep. Thankfully, Bridgestone's tires save the day (and the sheep!) and offer viewers a reminder that it's important to brake for animals. (This is a big deal: Every day, an estimated 1 million animals are killed on U.S. highways alone.)
Coca-Cola: This ad dazzled Super Bowl viewers with its CGI portrayal of ladybugs, grasshoppers, bumblebees, dragonflies, and other insects. An ad this beautiful showcases the advancements in CGI and animatronic technologies that have completely eliminated the need to use live animals in film, television, and advertising. Coca-Cola proves that you can put together a successful ad that makes no artistic compromises while still sending the important message that animal abuse is always wrong.
Sobe: Like Coca-Cola, Sobe used high-tech CGI technology (and absolutely no live animals) to depict lizards dancing with football players. Best of all, no Naomi Campbell this year (we may wish she was CGI, but, unfortunately, she and her furs are all-too-real).
In Between:
Budweiser: Normally, we despise Budweiser's ads featuring Clydesdale horses (who needs a live mascot when there are so many creative alternatives?). But this year, Budweiser almost got on our good side. One of their Clydesdales falls in love with an enslaved circus horse. We're glad to see that Budweiser seems opposed to the exploitation of horses in circuses, but that leaves us a bit confused as to why they're OK with taking advantage of these animals in their own commercials.
Pedigree: We're glad Pedigree promotes adopting dogs from animal shelters (and not keeping exotic animals captive). It appears, though, that at least some of the exotic animals in the commercial are the real deal (as opposed to CGI). Since they clearly weren't filmed in their natural environment, Pedigree looks like one more company that doesn't practice what it preaches.
The Worst:
Doritos: Generally, Doritos' commercials are pretty funny, but one of their ads was completely spoiled by the presence of a capuchin monkey. All animals forced into show business are subjected to beatings and intensive confinement, and capuchin monkeys in particular are high-strung and often resort to self-mutilation in response to stress and boredom. Not funny. At all. Plus, I'm pretty bitter that this commercial depicted a woman's clothes flying off: I thought NBC didn't allow "sexy" ads? I guess this one just slipped by someone at NBC.
Castrol Oil: Without a doubt, "Castrol Oil: Edge Monkeys" wins the Worst of the Worst award for this year's ads. Castrol must not have gotten the memo that young chimpanzees used in the entertainment industry are ripped away from their mothers, beaten into submission, and discarded at filthy roadside zoos when they grow too large and strong to be controlled. Is anyone still laughing? Somehow, I don't think the chimpanzees ever were. Send a letter demanding they stop running the ad and never use great apes in advertisements again!
What were your favorite and least favorite commercials? Leave a comment and let us know.
Hold on to your loincloths, boys and girls—another adaptation of Tarzan (yes … in addition to the 88 that already exist) will be swinging into theaters in 2010! Critics say co-writer and director Stephen Sommers will be focusing on jungle love, but this classic story is sure to have scenes of a boy raised by great apes in the jungle. So, when Anjelica Huston (who has been speaking up for animals abused in the film industry since she was a kid) heard about the film, she contacted Sommers. Anjelica writes:
"Ever since I heard my father complain about animal trainers on the set of his epic The Bible, I've worried about what happens to animal 'actors' behind the scenes. . . . Critics lauded King Kong … for the emotional depth that the giant ape displayed—without any real apes suffering in the process. Can I please hear that you similarly plan to use only creative alternatives to great apes in Tarzan?"
"Ever since I heard my father complain about animal trainers on the set of his epic The Bible, I've worried about what happens to animal 'actors' behind the scenes.
. . .
Critics lauded King Kong … for the emotional depth that the giant ape displayed—without any real apes suffering in the process. Can I please hear that you similarly plan to use only creative alternatives to great apes in Tarzan?"
Luckily, Sommers has a history of using flashy special effects and CGI in his blockbuster films, which have included Van Helsing and The Mummy. Hopefully, he'll continue to do what he does best and leave great apes in the jungle where they belong. Oh, and Sommers, if Anjelica's lovely letter doesn't convince you, here's a promise: Leave out the live apes and I'll be your personal Jane.
P.S. If you haven't seen it yet, check out Anjelica's behind-the-scenes exposé about great apes forced into the entertainment industry here.
Ugh …No, seriously. Ugh!OK, having turned *mumble* years old last Friday, I'm not really a member of this show's "target demographic." But even 'tweens must find the heartless use of a live baby chimpanzee in Nickelodeon's Merry Christmas, Drake & Josh offensive.Forget for a moment that this is a program with so little imagination that they named the lead characters—played by Drake Bell and Josh Peck—"Drake" and "Josh." Forget that their idea of family-appropriate humor is to depict a child on the receiving end of a stream of ape urine—and I'm not sure that qualifies as "humor" at all. Still, although these folks clearly aren't very smart or creative, nothing justifies exploiting an animal for supposed "entertainment."
So what's so wrong with using a chimpanzee? I'm glad you asked. You or I might have fantasies of thanking "the Academy" while clutching a statuette and dressed to the nines (wearing Stella or Marc, natch), but animals want to be left in peace—they don't want to be "stars." In fact, the chimps in movies and TV are still toddlers who need to be back with their families doing what they're meant to do. I mean, think about it: When you see documentaries about apes in nature, are they wearing clothes or riding unicycles? Do they have hidden restraints and shock collars?To get chimpanzees, orangutans, and other great apes to perform, "trainers" often beat and electro-shock them. The rest of the time, most of the animals live in tiny metal cages. And when they're no longer useful to producers, they're often dumped at horrible roadside zoos—usually when they're only about 8 years old and have about 50 years left to stare at the wall. There's no time like the holidays to remind Hollywood that we're not going to put up with any more "monkey" business. Please join us in telling Nickelodeon that there's nothing less Merry than a lonely, suffering chimpanzee forced to grimace and mug for a few chuckles.
Written by Jeff Mackey
After learning from PETA just how hideous life can be for great apes who are kept captive and forced to perform in advertisements, thanks go to Ad Council president and CEO Peggy Conlon for signing our "Great Ape Humane Pledge," committing never to use great apes in ads! This means the Ad Council won't ever support the abuse of great apes in advertising.
To express our gratitude in PETA style, we sent Conlon a box of vegan chocolate chimpanzees and a big "thank you" for joining the host of companies that have stood up for great apes. The Ad Council joins the likes of Subaru, Honda, Yahoo!, PUMA, Movietickets.com, and SEGA, which also recently made this fantastic pledge.
Oh, and PETA will be following up with the CEOs of all the top U.S. ad agencies that sit on the Ad Council's executive board, requesting that they follow suit, so … expect more on this campaign in the near future! Of course, if you work in the ad world, you can save us the trouble of tracking you down by signing PETA's "Great Ape Humane Pledge" today! Yes, chocolate monkeys would follow shortly!
Written by Sean Conner
We're officially bananas about SEGA. In fact, we're sending them a thank-you card and little vegan chocolates in the shape of monkeys (closest we could get to apes) as I write this. Why is this gaming giant scoring such a sweet treat? After learning that SEGA used a real chimpanzee in an online video promoting Samba De Amigo (a new Wii game in which you use your primate prowess and a pair of maracas to make beautiful music), we contacted the company.
We explained how involuntary chimpanzee "actors" are taken away from their mothers when they are just a year or so old and forced to perform confusing and repetitious tricks. We also explained some of the horrible methods that chimpanzee "trainers" use, such as isolation, beatings with sawed-off pool cues and slapjacks, and food deprivation. Then, at the ripe old age of just 8, the chimpanzees reach puberty and their showbiz careers are over—and they end up being dumped at dismal roadside zoos or sold to laboratories for experimentation.
Faster than you can mangle a Metallica song on Guitar Hero, SEGA pulled the video from its site and promised to keep all great apes out of its ads!
Please join me in giving SEGA two opposable thumbs up for making the compassionate decision to keep great apes out of the act.
Written by Amy Elizabeth
Having managed to survive the horrors of an estimated 25 to 40 years of captivity and exploitation as part of a daily amusement-park parade, Dorothy the chimpanzee died peacefully of old age at In Defense of Animals (IDA) Africa's Sanaga-Yong Center in Cameroon last month.
Following the first armed confiscation of primates in Cameroon, Dorothy was freed from her confinement at the amusement park and taken to Sanaga-Yong in 2000.
So touched by Dorothy's life and parting, staff members and chimpanzees held a funeral service to honor and remember her. Dorothy was buried beside the enclosure she had called home, near the tomb of her friend Becky.
In her memory, we have donated money to help construct a raised platform above Dorothy's former home. The platform will allow visitors to the center to see into the forested enclosure and reflect on Dorothy's life, both at the center and before her stay there.
Anjelica Huston has decades of experience on the set, tracing back to watching her father, John, filming during her childhood. Given her experiences with animals on the set, we were excited when she sat down with us to discuss the abuses endured by great apes used in film, television, and advertising.
U.S. Department of Agriculture inspectors have documented that chimpanzees and orangutans were denied even minimal "environmental enrichment" and veterinary care in times of illness. And undercover investigations have shown that trainers beat and scream at great apes in order to force them to perform dumb, confusing tricks, take after take, under the burning arc lights.
Chimpanzees can live to be 60 years old and orangutans can live to be 50, but they grow too strong to be handled around age 8. That's when, useless to the industry, most are dumped in roadside hellholes, where they can live in barren cages, languishing amid their own waste or sold for use in experiments. There is no Hollywood actors' retirement home for them. You can see Anjelica's video about this business here:
Anjelica also spoke with us after the filming of the video, telling us how she grew so passionate about this issue, and why the abuse of great apes will never happen on her set:
I think without question that [when] one forcibly takes small simians, small apes away from their parents at [a young] age … and manipulating them into some sort of fake response for the amusement of humans or indeed human children—it's a very bad ethic. … I remember seeing this terribly sad, lonely elephant in Bath, England, at the zoo in the pouring rain with nothing but a football for companionship, and thinking, "No child on Earth would want to see that. No child on Earth who understands the predicament of this animal could possibly approve it."
Check out the b-roll from the video shoot here:
Thanks, Anjelica, from us and from them!
Blind and sighted, man or macaque—we all celebrate in the same way. A recent study from scientists at the University of British Columbia and San Francisco State University shows that the "victory dance"—arms raised, chest puffed out—is an instinctive trait of all primates.
You mean I have something in common with Michael Phelps? All right, then!
It turns out that the victory dance closely resembles the dominance displays of chimpanzees and monkeys—"Yes, I'm strong, and I'm bigger than you"—and is universal among all athletes, from all cultures, including blind Paralympians. Since the blind athletes couldn't have learned this behavior from others, the victory dance has to be innate.
Similarly, poses of defeat—heads down, shoulders slumped—are also the same for all primates (and not only primates), with the exception of some sighted athletes from the U.S. and Western Europe. The lead author of the study speculates that "the athletes were intentionally hiding their feelings—consciously overriding their innate urge to signal defeat—because losing is so stigmatized in their cultures." Tellingly, blind athletes from the same countries did exhibit the same defeat poses as other primates—showing again that this is innate behavior.
More and more studies confirm what we already know—that we are all one under the skin. Hopefully, these studies will bring humans one step closer toward having respect for all primates.
Written by Amanda Schinke
You know those silly looking hats that the British Royal Guards wear? Did you know that they're still made out of real bear skin—and that it can take up to one whole bear to make just one cap? And that the bears' deaths are usually anything but quick, clean, and humane? Bears are ensnared, sometimes for days, in painful traps. Sometimes they actually get away … but die much later from blood loss or starvation. And in some Canadian provinces, there's nothing to stop the shooting of nursing mothers with cubs
So, since grizzly-bear hunting season is set to open next week in British Columbia—and a record 430 grizzlies were killed last year, mostly by trophy hunters (like the "gentlemen" pictured)—we recognize our responsibility to offer you an alternative perspective of this "blood sport." I mean, hey, we're PETA, isn't it our job to lay it on the masses and get them off their asses to fight against these fascist practices? (Bragging rights to anyone who knows what that paraphrases.)
You can check out campaign news here. PETA and its affiliates have spanned the globe—from naked protesters in Europe to a feisty activist dressed in bear suit that successfully stalked a Royal couple across the Caribbean. As always, there are sassy celebrity endorsements to encourage you to get involved too. Please do your part to save a bear and sign PETA Europe's petition to U.K. Prime Minister Gordon Brown in support of bears.
Written by Missy Lane
If you have a general question for PETA and would like a response, please e-mail Info@peta.org. If you need to report cruelty to an animal, please click here. If you are reporting an animal in imminent danger and know where to find the animal and if the abuse is taking place right now, please call your local police department. If the police are unresponsive, please call PETA immediately at 757-622-7382 and press 2.
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