Zac Efron and Kodiak Cakes Take Heat From PETA Over Bear Stunt

For Immediate Release:
August 8, 2022

Contact:
Moira Colley 202-483-7382

This morning, PETA sent a letter to Kodiak Cakes CEO Joel Clark urging him to pull the plug on a new advertising campaign featuring the company’s chief brand officer, Zac Efron, and a bear named Tank, who was traumatically removed from his mother when he was only 6 weeks old by a breeder and shipped to Hollywood trainer Doug Seus. Ironically, the products being advertised bear the slogan “Keep It Wild.” PETA wants Efron to remove his ads with Tank and replace them with ads featuring computer-generated imagery.

“No company that gives a hoot about wild animals or a mother bear’s love for her cub would ever exploit them,” says PETA Foundation Director of Captive Animal Welfare Debbie Metzler. “This campaign is wildly rotten, and PETA is calling on Kodiak Cakes and Zac Efron to apologize, make amends, and send these ads to the cutting-room floor.”

PETA notes that animals like Tank who are used for publicity stunts are often separated from their mothers at a young age, likely endure violent training sessions to break their spirits and make them compliant, and are subjected to the stresses of being hauled to production sets, where they’re surrounded by a bustling crew—when in nature they would shy away from humans and noise.

PETA—whose motto reads, in part, that “animals are not ours to use for entertainment”—opposes speciesism, a human-supremacist worldview. For more information, please visit PETA.org or follow the group on Twitter, Facebook, or Instagram.