Peta plans to launch a porn site in name of veganism

by @gordonmacmillan, posted on 23 August, 2011 at 11:16 am, filed under Web and tagged , , , . Bookmark the permalink. Follow any comments here with the RSS feed for this post.

Sasha Grey in Peta "Too much sex can be a bad thing" ad campaign PETA, which is no stranger to attention grabbing campaigns (PETA ‘Baby P’ ad banned by ASA) or using sex to raise awareness (NBC refuses to sexually explicit PETA ad), is upping ante with its latest headlining grabbing idea: the launch of a XXX porn site designed to raise awareness of veganism.

And yes it will be putting actual adult content online, which is something it knows a little about having previously put adult stars Jenna Jameson and Sasha Grey in a campaign talking about sex.

According to PETA spokeswoman Lindsay Rajt while the XXX site will have enough adult content to qualify for the XXX domain it will feature other graphic images of animal mistreatment uncovered by the group’s hidden camera investigations.

Rajt told the Huffington Post that “there will be a lot of girl and boy next door content, but we haven’t ruled out celebrities on the site as well”.

Peta seems to have no trouble getting celebs to strip. ‘The Office’ actress Lucy Davis and Sadie Frost have both taken off their clothes for Peta in the past following in the footsteps of Pamela Anderson who has bared her flesh for Peta alongside swimmer Amanda Beard.

Others who have appeared more recently include model Heather Davis and reality star Brooke Hogan.

Peta is bound to be accused of headline grabbing sensationalism. A charge it can hardly deny. We all know sex sells (anything) and without it Peta would have acehieved nowhere near the international recognition that it has.

You could argue on that basis that its racy tactics have greatly enhanced its campaign for vegetarianism, but at what price? At some point you reach a point where the message starts to over write the idea that it is trying to promote. And who are these people that its sex driven ads are targeting? I wonder how many vegetarians are influenced by Peta’s marketing. My guess is not many.

Rajt argues that the motives behind its tactics are “cleverly thought out” and that in the age of 24-hour news such high profile tactics are the only way to get results.

“We try to use absolutely every outlet to stick up for animals … We are careful about what we do and wouldn’t use nudity or some of our flashier tactics if we didn’t know they worked. We also track the effectiveness of our actions very closely and see if we get visitors checking out other features on our site,” Rajt.