Murphy: Rejecting the Vegan Message

In politics, the rule of thumb has long been that negative campaigning generates traction. Conventional wisdom suggests that the more a candidate smears his or her opponent, the greater the impact on the voters. But in marketing consumer products, ad agencies have traditionally gone in the other direction: Sell the benefits of your product, create “good feelings” about the brand and avoid spending precious share of mind on trying to trash the competition. That’s changed in recent years, perhaps in tandem with the coarsening of political speech. With many of the “alternative” categories competing with conventional food products, the approach is not to promote the benefits of organic or vegetarian, but rather spend time and money attacking mainstream producers, processors and marketers.When the upstarts aren’t collecting serious windfalls by selling out to the very companies they profess to loathe, that is. A great example of those dynamics is taking place overseas, specifically in Ireland. As a report in The Irish Times detailed, a vegan activist group was recently refused permission to run attack ads aimed at that country’s dairy industry.The ads in question were developed by a group called Go Vegan World and were to appear as posters on Dublin Bus vehicles and in stations operated by Irish Rail. However, Exterion Media, the contractor responsible for selling ad space on buses and in train stations, deemed the ads to be “emotive and provocative” and likely to draw complaints.