‘Leather’ Pop-Up Shop Nets Ogilvy & Mather Bangkok PETA’s ‘Company Of The Year’ Award

Viral Video Shows Shoppers Shocked by ‘Blood’ and Beating ‘Hearts’ in ‘Luxury’ Bags

For Immediate Release:
December 19, 2016

Contact:
Brooke Rossi 202-483-7382

For reaching more than 100 million viewers globally through a PETA Asia video of “The Leather Work“—a pop-up shop of “luxury” goods, where the snakeskin shoes and crocodile-skin handbags contained beating “hearts,” stretchy “sinew,” and pools of “blood” that coated shoppers’ hands and feet—Ogilvy & Mather Advertising Bangkok has won PETA’s award for 2016 Company of the Year.

Ogilvy & Mather conceptualized and created the shop in Bangkok’s bustling CentralWorld mall to shine a spotlight on the cruelty of the exotic-skins industry. In addition to making waves on social media, the video won two awards at the Cannes Lions International Festival of Creativity.

“Ogilvy & Mather is PETA’s Company of the Year for showing that every animal-skin handbag stopped a beating heart,” says PETA President Ingrid Newkirk. “Consumers need to know that the only way to keep the blood and gore off their hands is to refuse to buy exotic-skin bags, belts, or shoes.”

PETA—whose motto reads, in part, that “animals are not ours to wear”—has revealed that crocodiles and alligators are kept in barren pits for years before being crudely slaughtered for “luxury” bags and other fashion accessories. Workers saw open reptiles’ necks while they’re still conscious. Snakes killed for their skins are nailed to trees, and their bodies are cut open from one end to the other as they’re skinned alive. Lizards are often decapitated, while others writhe in agony as their skin is torn off.

For more information, please visit PETA.org or click here.