The Humane Society of the United States (HSUS) has started a direct response advertising effort to raise $1 million annually over three years to stop the hunting of baby seals in Canada. The first advertisement, a graphic, full-page color ad, was to appear in The New York Times June 13.
“We wanted to inaugurate this campaign with an exclamation point and that is a full-page ad in The New York Times,” said John Grandy, senior vice president of the HSUS, a national nonprofit dedicated to the protection of pets, farm animals and wildlife worldwide.
The ProtectSeal campaign will be bolstered by e-mail newsletters containing video clips. The first monthly newsletter, which broadcast June 12, is part of a revamped e-mail newsletter program at HSUS.
The Times ad shows a masked hunter clubbing a seal beneath the headline — “O Canada, How Could You?” — designed to look as if it was written in blood. This first ad was paid for with a grant from an anonymous foundation, Grandy said.
“If you ask them, most people in the United States will tell you they think this issue was solved 20 years ago,” Grandy said. And, although other nations stopped the hunting of seals and importation of seal fur, Canada has gradually been increasing the quota of seals allowed to be hunted. This year, Canada expanded the quota to allow up to 975,000 baby seals to be hunted over the next three years, he said.
Canadian officials could not be reached by press time.
The overall campaign, which Grandy expects to include ads in various newspapers and magazines as well as on radio and TV, will feature a direct response call to action similar to the Times ad.
The Times' offering includes a toll-free number and the address of a special microsite set up to provide information about the seal hunt (www.protectseals.org). The goal is to drive people to the microsite, where they can sign up for the monthly e-newsletter and learn more about the issue. This gives HSUS a chance to collect opt-in e-mail addresses of potential contributors.
In addition to encouraging people to visit the site, the ad calls for readers to contact Canada's prime minister Jean Chretien and the Canadian tourist department and threaten to boycott Canadian products and cancel trips to Canada. “Canada, we don't buy it! Stop killing baby seals!” read the tagline.
The newsletter details the three-year campaign and provides links to a donation page and to the Web site to see the video. The clip shows hunters in snowmobiles roaring across the ice to club to death dozens of white baby seals. Grandy provides the voice-over and a plea to “stop the slaughter.”
The ProtectSeals e-mail is the seventh video e-newsletter HSUS has sent since April.
Since the nonprofit has long relied on film to get its message out (the Washington headquarters has a video production center and streaming video has long been a staple on www.hsus.org).
“You can convey things like the suffering of an animal much better through video than text,” said Geoff Handy, acting director of HSUS' e-Community department.
Two text-based e-newsletters, the year-old Humane Living and three-year-old HUMANElines, were converted to contain video this spring. Subscribers were asked if they wanted to receive the additional missives Cats for Life, Dogs for Life, or Pets for Life. Another issue-oriented e-newsletter, Keiko Watch, started up in May to raise funds for the whale that starred in the film “Free Willy.”
HSUS collected more addresses when people opted in on the main Web site. Since April, the group has built its database from about 30,000 to 200,000 opt-in addresses, distributed among the e-newsletters.
Open rates are high. They range from about 33% to 50%, said Ben Chodor, CEO of Exciting New Technologies, New York, which handles the e-newsletters. And, about 10% of new subscribers tell HSUS they heard about the e-pubs when they received pass-alongs from friends.
The e-mail initiatives are so new, conversion rates and e-mail costs compared with direct mail costs haven't been quantified yet, said Handy. HSUS has a $60 million annual budget.
