How Do You Treat Uninformed Consumers?
Picture this: You’re five years old and get to go to work with Dad one day. You’re so pumped you get to spend the whole, entire day with your father and his work buddies taking in everything they do and say like it’s your religion. You spend the day riding in the pick-up alongside him, listening to all of his favorites songs while you roam from pasture to pasture. You look out the rolled-down window and through the sea of sporadic wildflowers and cow-calf pairs you see a portion of the fence Dad spent hours building knocked over and a few cows on the neighbor’s place.
Dad sees it too, so he calls one of his buddies to come help him and then attempts to corral these cattle back to the right side of the fence. You sit on the bed of the pickup, the sun reflecting off the cool sunshades Gramma bought you for t-ball, and watch the two men as they move the cows back over and begin mending the fence. Dad says if you sit on the tailgate the whole time and don’t move, he’ll take you to town to buy you a Coke, so your butt is glued to that seat no matter what. You can’t wait to get home to tell Mom what happened. You’re right in the middle of thinking ‘this is the best day ever’ when out of nowhere, you cut your finger on some barbed wire you’d been fidgeting with on the pickup bed. You let out a loud yelp and squeal a four-letter word — Dad looks up at you in shock, his buddy starts to laugh. “We’ll talk about this later, go sit in the pickup,” Dad says through furrowed brows. You hop off the pickup bed, open the truck door, and sit there in confusion wondering what there is to talk about.
I’m no mind reader, but I can tell you the kid in the story above had no idea what he did wrong. We were all this kid at one point — navigating what we perceived as “right” and “wrong” as best as we could and hoping we didn’t get in trouble in the process.
From the time we are born until the time we die, we are constantly trying to differentiate between right and wrong, black and white, up and down — and sometimes our definition of those things are not the same definition as someone else’s. This is where we land on a difference of opinion.
Contrary to popular belief, opinions can differ and still be formed by solid thoughts. Granted, hard facts can debunk many beliefs, but an opinion is a view or judgment formed about something, not necessarily based on fact or knowledge. It’s hard sometimes to differentiate between fact and opinion, take my writing for example: this column allows me to express my opinion, but my front-page story this week does not share my opinion at all. My front-page story shares other peoples’ opinions, but not mine — it can all get a little muddy.
So, here’s one of my opinions for you: PETA is dang good at their job.
No, I don’t believe in many things People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals (PETA) stands for and promotes, but there is absolutely no denying that PETA is great at sharing their message to millions of people and gaining the support of a shockingly large portion of said people. It’s all about marketing.
Marketing, as defined by Merriam-Webster, is the process or technique of promoting, selling, and distributing a product or service. PETA is in the business of destroying animal agriculture, and one of their products is NOT ruling in dominion over animals and eating them. They promote said product until they’re blue in the face, and they do a bang-up job of it.
Go check out PETA’s Facebook page, or their Twitter feed, or better yet, their YouTube channel. To you and I, animal agriculture enthusiasts, PETA’s social media can look like a load of garbage. But to the other 89 percent of the U.S. population which doesn’t rely on agriculture for their livelihoods, PETA’s social media accounts are like a well of unknown information.
You see, PETA knows what sells, they know how to tug on the heart strings, and they know who needs to hear it: the moveable middle.
Going off of a simple bell curve, roughly 16 percent of the population is in blind support of animal agriculture while another 16 percent are in blind disapproval of animal agriculture practices. That 68 percent on the fence, the “moveable middle,” is the group on which PETA preys. They look at these suburban moms, college kids who now use their own money to purchase food, and adult men who overheard a buff guy at the gym say that he eats vegan and they see opportunity. They see a chance to sway their opinion to achieve one of their overall goals: abolish animal agriculture.
But what do we see? Do we see opportunity? Do we see a chance to sway their opinion? Better yet, do we jump at the moment where we get a chance to explain just why animal agriculture is a good thing? Nine times out of ten, we just keep our mouth shut, keep our head down, and keep working — but we’re quick to judge and mock these people after they post about their new lifestyle on Facebook.
Isn’t it strange that most of us don’t have time to advocate for agriculture, but we do have time to scold someone with a different opinion than us, even though they have no inkling of what agriculturists do because we never told them to begin with?
Now, back to the story from the beginning of this column: when that kid’s father got back in the pickup after fixing fence and gave him a stern talking to, do you think the father immediately started yelling? Do you think the father called the kid “stupid” and claimed he had no respect for his child just for saying a word the kid had no idea was even considered a “bad word?” I’m no parenting expert, but I think if the father DID complete these actions, the kid would either talk back or cry. It’s our human instinct to go into defense mode when someone comes at us in a hostile manner. And it’s human defense to automatically resent the person mocking or yelling at them — so why do so many of us do it to uninformed consumers?
This past week, a friend of mine and I put out a survey to gain some knowledge of where animal agriculture enthusiast and anti-animal agriculture activists stand with each other and how one party believes they can work with the other party. Next week, I’ll share some of the results of this survey. Until then, do me a favor and not only think about the way you treat uninformed consumers, but how you believe agriculturists can connect with these consumers.
