PETA's billboard not enough to change the Thanksgiving turkey tradition

It's not so easy to change what people eat for Thanksgiving, even when faced with a billboard saying "I am me, not meat. See the individual. Go vegan."

People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals (PETA) recently put up the billboard on Huron Chuch Road between Kenora Street and Malden Road. It features a picture of a turkey along with the text.

But rather than swaying consumer behaviour, it might only be enough to generate discussion, according to a marketing professor at the Odette School of Business at University of Windsor.

"You're not going to dismantle someone's inherited traditions in terms of consumption purchase overnight," said Vincent Georgie. And at this stage,some of those Thanksgiving purchases have already gone through.

However, a senior campaigner for PETA, Amber Canavan, said they have heard from people "who are interested in taking the bird off the table and replacing it with one of the great vegan roasts that are out there" every time a billboard goes up.

A more longitudinal approach

Georgie isn't convinced for a couple of reasons.

One of the issues he raised is that this particularmessage is framed negatively, and designed to make the consumer "feel guilty," he said.

"The only way you can actually get someone to start changing their behaviour is to start getting their defences down and not have people feel threatened by the message or feel you're saying they're a bad person because of it."

Adding onto the fact that a billboard is not targeted toward people who make purchasing decisions, it's difficult to measure the actual success of this campaign, said Georgie.

This type of social marketing also needs to be done in a "more longitudinal fashion" in order to make the kind of cultural shift PETA wants, especially because Thanksgiving tradition also has sentimental value attached to it.

People have memories of having turkey every year and it's different from just choosing a different brand, he said.

"This is not the same thing as switching shampoo."