Since the shirt isn’t going to have any effect on the actual poachers of the tigers it seems like a pretty poor marketing campaign. I really expected more from Leo Burnett , the famous advertising agency that apparently did this for the World Wildlife Fund (WWF).
I suppose it might work alright to generate awareness of the poaching problem… but I still fail to see what that will solve, unless there is a huge mainstream market for Siberian tiger stuff I am not aware of.
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5 responses to “Siberian Tiger Poachers – What It Feels Like To Get Shot WWF Ad Campaign”
This is the weirdest accent ever. It’s like a Russian guy learned to speak English from watching Fosters commercial.
Yea I can’t tell if it’s a bad computer voice or not.
Wow…. 200,000 people said “No to killing the Siberian Tiger”. And how many of those people would have killed one without the effect of the Tshirt campaign?
Zero.
Stuff like this isn’t necessarily intended to actually curb the activity that it features – in this case Tiger Shooting. From the standpoint of the people buying and wearing the shirts, its like the people who participate in “Visualize World Peace” or “Sign our petition to end War” crap. Makes them “feel” like they are doing something worthwhile that actually requires little to no actual effort on their part.
From the standpoint of people selling the shirts (or collecting donations), they use the funds to further their own agenda. Which is mainly funding lobbyists in Washington to push for more environmentally focused restrictions on individuals and businesses.
It gives the WWF a warm-fuzzy feeling. Mission accomplished!
Well, when the population is low, the market doesn’t have to be large to be a threat. Large, apex predators like tigers are what is called k-selected species. They are specialist competitors who invest heavily in relatively few offspring and live long, slow maturing lives (unlike say insects or squid, which lay millions of eggs and 99% die in the first season). The loss of even a few breeding adults can heavily impact the population curve. Additionally, being at the top of the food chain, it takes a tremendous amount of habitat to support just a few resident adults. There never were THAT many to begin with.
That being said, yeah this is a pretty cheesy effort to “raise awareness” which I always translate as “this is a terrible situation and I sure wish somebody else would do something about it.” The only thing worse is when people try to raise awareness for their pet peeve by doing something that they like to do anyway, like ride their bike or run marathons, and then try to get you to pay them to do it so that they can raise money to support the others who are actually trying to do something.