vegansaurus!
05/18/2012
This ad is funny! You know me, on the ad beat again; and I gotta say, this is a cute video. And I totally learned the message: spay/neuter at four months. And that’s the point, right? To plant the message? They have another video that explains the majority of pet owners believe in fixing their pets, it’s just that many don’t realize their pet can get preggers so early. My vet said to spay my Mitsy at two pounds, but four months is a much more tangible deadline.
OMG Mitsy was so cute at two pounds! And she was a thug about her surgery. She came home from getting spayed like nothing happened and then totally ripped her pain-killer patch off. She was pulling at it and I kept trying to stick it back down, and then she just totally ripped it off, pulling fur out and all! She was like, “sheeeet, I don’t need no pain killers!” Straight thug.
Now we need a series that targets male pet owners who have male pets and have some weird hangup about snipping their pet’s nads. I’m like, dudes, grow the eff up!
∞ posted at 04:40 by youtalkfunny 
05/04/2012
Lush’s new anti-animal-testing campaign is more powerful, less exploitative than PETA »
Via Ecouterre, we learn of this shocking new ad campaign from Lush, meant to make explicit the horrors of animal testing by using a LIVE (simulated) NUDE GIRL in place of the non-human animal subject. This window display, featuring vegan performance artist Jacqueline Trades, debuted at Lush’s Regent Street store in London on April 25. It coincides with this Fight Animal Testing site and European Union-centered petition.
What does your Vegansaurus think about it? We’re divided!
Meave says:
It’s very PETA, no? I find it significantly less obnoxious than those “Sexxxy ladies in lettuce-leaf bikinis” or whatever outfits for PETA. This is more freak ‘em out than make ‘em want to fuck you, which is appropriate, because animal testing is horrific and should be treated as such. I take issue with the subject of the testing being a nearly naked woman. The female body is 100 percent commodified in Western society, and I don’t think that this campaign recontextualizes it enough to desexualize it, which is to say, as awful as the tests the “scientists” are simulating performing on her, I see “naked lady” before I see “human-as-animal test subject,” and that bothers me.
I wonder how much PETA has ruined the shock value of substituting a human body for an animal’s. PETA uses conventionally attractive (by Occidental standards) female bodies in varying states of undress for essentially every campaign; is it PETA’s fault now I can’t look at this girl without thinking about all the meat-eating, leather-wearing celebrities in the “I’d rather go naked than wear fur” posters, or women wearing only saran wrap? I hate animal testing, but I also hate the exploitation of any body. On the other hand, how many of the products I slap on my face every day exploited animal bodies before they got to my makeup case?* Because you worked with a performance artist, I think you do win this one, Lush. Sign the petition!
Jenny says:
This is pretty horrific, but in an avant-garde kind of artsy way. I mean, just looking at these images is grossing me out, but I can’t stop. Oh those activists, always putting themselves on the line for their causes. And hey, look how much attention and signatures it garnered (nearly 200,000 as of Wednesday night)! Yep, here’s the deal — I’m into it. As long as I don’t have to be the one in the store window, yo.
Isn’t it crazy how art will bring out such intense emotion?! Isn’t it great to really FEEL something? So tell us, what do you guys think? How does this make you feel?
*Actually none, I am a careful makeup consumer.
∞ posted at 09:44 by seriousmeaveness 
05/03/2012
Part two of the SF SPCA’s anti-puppy mill campaign! »
Remember when Megan gave you the heads up about the new SF SPCA anti-puppy mill campaign? Well, part two has been unveiled in downtown San Francisco, and is available for you to see until Friday afternoon!
Krista Maloney of the SF SPCA says, “We’ve installed a ‘puppy bin’ in the highly trafficked plaza at the intersection of Sacramento and Drumm streets, near Embarcadero Center. The bin looks like a typical newspaper stand, except the glass front is a video of puppies. Within the bin is The Canine Tribune, featuring articles about puppy mills. It will remain there until 3 p.m. on Friday, May 4.”
This is a brief video of reactions of passersby as they check out the puppy bin.
[Can’t see the video? Watch it on Vegansaurus.com!]
Go see it for yourself, on your lunch break or something!
You can see that Megan Rascal’s Figgy is concerned. Those puppies are his peeps, yo! He would go see the campaign himself, but he’ll have to settle for the video, as he resides on the East Coast [though he says hi to his BBDO SF homie Ian!].
∞ posted at 09:56 by jennybradley 
04/23/2012
SF SPCA starts new campaign against puppymills and we like it! »
The SF SPCA has a new anti-puppymill campaign and it’s pretty cool so far, and they promise more cool stuff to come! They’ve partnered with ad agency BBDO to create this great fake puppymill ad. I know some nice BBDO people in their New York office; this is the same agency that ingeniously autocorrects monkeys out of their writers’ scripts.
This campaign was inspired by some sad discoveries the SF SPCA made:
A recent SF SPCA survey of San Francisco dog owners showed that buying online was the number-one place where people got their dogs. The survey showed that approximately 30 percent of puppies purchased in San Francisco are from puppy mills. 51 percent of those who purchased dogs online would not knowingly purchase from a puppy mill, yet 19 percent don’t know about puppy mills; hence the need for education.
Jeez louise. Puppymills are so depressing. I’m worried my Figgy came from a one but I have no idea. He was a purebred-looking stray in Pennsylvania—home of the Amish puppymill industry. As you probably know, if they don’t sell them as puppies, puppymills have no use for male dogs. The females can be turned into baby-machines, but the boys? Why spend effort and money taking care of bunch of male dogs you brought into the world when one or two can impregnate all the girl dogs on their own? They usually just kill the extra males (and we’re not talking euthanasia!), but maybe Fig broke free and set out on his own. Totally Fivel of him.
∞ posted at 08:27 by youtalkfunny
04/05/2012
This is one in a new series of ads from PETA. It’s pretty funny. There are a bunch of others but I like this one because giraffes do have pretty lashes! Right? Think it’s going to get as much attention as PETA’s more scandalous ads? Doubt it. Oh society. Le sigh.
Another PETA video came out this week that makes me too sad to post, but you can watch it for yourself. This veterinarian goes about killing sick animals in a number of disturbing ways. Oh society. Le sigh.
∞ posted at 11:10 by youtalkfunny
03/29/2012
Wow. PCRM, you’ve outdone yourself. Apparently this is some attention-seeking gimmick they proposed to American Airlines. Well, congrats, here’s your attention: you’re super fucking low. I personally feel bullied by this commercial. Seriously, you’re scumbags.
So the message is that meat makes you fat and people that eat meat are fat. So calling a bunch of people fat is how you gain…what, exactly? I’m guessing contempt. And they claim they are all about health but we’re talking about elbow room? Where’s the health message?
If I’m the vegan an omnivore gets seated next to, do they get their $10 back because I’m not skinny? Really they should have to pay $20 to sit next to a fat vegan—we have all the best snacks!
For real, this is sickening. It makes me not want to be vegan. Or at the very least, it makes me question ever using PCRM as a source for information. I used to refer people to their site a lot for info about animal testing and now I’d just be so embarrassed to do that. The cheese ads were bad but I wasn’t going to dismiss the organization completely for one fucked up campaign. But if this is their thing now? No, I don’t want to be associated with a bunch of bullying lowlifes.
∞ posted at 15:33 by youtalkfunny
11/17/2011
I recently posted a commercial from The Shelter Pet Project that’s totally cute, but this new one is even cuter I think! I wasn’t sure what it had to do with shelter pets but my sis pointed out that it’s like the dog is sitting there normal, not going crazy like people may be imagining shelter pets do. There’s a few more on the site but this is my fave. I love his giggly inflection! He can’t believe how silly his human is!
∞ posted at 04:54 by youtalkfunny
11/15/2011
Catvertising! This is the latest viral video in the ad community and it’s pretty great, though it does remind me A LOT of that Kittywood video from the summer. But I think this one is a bit better, due in no small part to the shorter length. My social media teacher once told me no internet video should be longer than 90 seconds, and I think that’s a pretty good policy.
So what do we think? Is the future in catvertising? The catvertisers are right: There’s no end to material there. I always say cats are like aliens; dogs are like toddlers and cats are like aliens. My cat does that crazy cat thing where she’ll be chillin’ and then all of a sudden, bam! She starts running back and forth! Then she breaks, looks around wildly and then bam! Runs away. What’s that about?
∞ posted at 05:27 by youtalkfunny
11/11/2011
I saw this commercial on the TV the other day and I was struck by the bittersweet cuteness! So nice to see a commercial like this on prime time TV. Turns out it’s from last year but it’s new to me so here we are.
It’s from the Shelter Pet Project, a group dedicated to providing good PR for shelter animals. From their site:
The Shelter Pet Project is the result of a collaborative effort between two leading animal welfare groups, The Humane Society of the United States and Maddie’s Fund, and the leading producer of public service advertising (PSA) campaigns, The Ad Council. Our goal is to make shelters the first place potential adopters turn when looking to get a new pet, ensuring that all healthy and treatable pets find loving homes. We do this by breaking down misconceptions surrounding shelter pets and communicating that “A person is the best thing to happen to a shelter pet. Be that person. Adopt.”
Sounds good to me! I think they are onto something. When I was looking to adopt, a lot of friends seemed to have the idea that if you get a shelter pup, it could have all these mental problems or something from its past. But if you raise a pup yourself, it’s going to be perfect? Yeah right. I think we’ve all seen how much people can screw up their biological kids, I’m sure they could do some damage with a puppy. It all depends how you train them once they’re in your care. So give a shelter pet a chance!
∞ posted at 06:23 by youtalkfunny
11/03/2011
A good picture could save a dog’s life! »
“I can’t stand the thought of, for want of a good picture, that a dog goes homeless.”
—Teresa Berg
Teresa Berg is a professional photographer who’s been using her powers to help little homeless dogs get the adoption photos they deserve! As you can see in the video below, she started working with a dachshund rescue that had been slow with adoptions. Now, with some professional photography help, the rescue’s adoption rates are up 100 percent! And in my opinion, it’s not just dogs getting adopted from there and not other shelters; I’ve known people who look around for a week or two online for a rescue dog and then give up and buy a dog anyway. Maybe if they saw the perfect picture? Because we all know that there are plenty of great dogs in shelters and if they got a chance, someone could love them. They just need a good PR person like Berg!
[Can’t see the video? Watch it on Vegansaurus.com!]
I know that in SF, photographer Kira Stackhouse helps kitties and pups get adopted by working with the SPCA and Muttville. Do any of you guys use your art to help homeless pets? I did some writing for rabbit adoption earlier this year—that was fun! I hope it helped!
All the homeless animals deserve a whole makeup team and ad agency, for real! Let’s get it together! Go team!
∞ posted at 08:18 by youtalkfunny
