Attempts to silence PETA have backfired on SeaWorld and Lamar Advertising—and animals are winning.
It started with a billboard—this billboard, to be exact:
After PETA placed this large “personal ad” from captive orca Tilikum to SeaWorld CEO Joel Manby just minutes away from SeaWorld Orlando last year, Manby reportedly pressured the billboard company, Lamar Advertising, to stop running our ads, anywhere and about anything. SeaWorld had suffered an estimated $12.5 million loss in revenue that year. But the abusement park must do a fair amount of business with Lamar, because the company’s executives caved.
So following our own advice to “never be silent,” PETA doubled down on our efforts to protest at SeaWorld’s parks, interrupt its forced animal performances, and demonstrate outside government buildings and other large public venues to let everyone know what the company does to captive marine animals.
And those protests (in addition to reaching millions of people in person and through viral videos) landed us a large feature on the homepage of the popular ad industry website Campaign US, right in front of the folks at Lamar. The headline? “Why Advertising’s to Blame for the Bulk of PETA’s Protests This Summer.”
As PETA’s vice president of communications, Colleen O’Brien, told Campaign US, “The number of demonstrations will continue to grow and grow.”
While SeaWorld rethinks yet another of its failed strategies, you might join us by very politely encouraging Lamar to resume running PETA’s lifesaving ads.
