life Viva!’s media blitz for the animals BY TONY WARDLE, EDITOR
Viva!’s staggering media blitz Viva! are pretty successful at getting media coverage for our campaigns but in all our 20 years, we have never had anything on the scale of the past three months. On too many occasions we have had big stories waiting to run and then, only hours before publication, the newspaper has killed them – often for no apparent reason. But not this time! We knew the Daily Mirror was going to support our foie-gras campaign but when we saw their coverage, we almost had to rub our eyes – we had the entire front page with a single headline – ‘Torture.’ Incredibly, it was followed by a further double-page spreads inside – pages six and seven, in prime position at the front of the paper. Our tactic of investigating farms we knew supplied Gordon Ramsay had worked brilliantly and the coverage continued. The next day the Mirror returned to the attack
with another full page (page nine) and Bill Oddie speaking out against the vile trade. A week later it was back again with a half page, announcing Masterchef’s decision to dump foie-gras. A further week and a further half page, fronted by Viva! patron Jenny Seagrove, calling on eBay to end its sale of ‘torture in a tin.’ Much of it was repeated in the Mirror’s sister paper north of the border, the Daily Record, and reverberations were felt about Europe. Scandinavian titles went for it big style and we did interviews for French TV and radio. When Ramsay announced he was dropping the foie-gras supplier we had exposed, a second wave of publicity shot around Europe. With numerous stores deciding to drop foie-gras and even whole supermarket chains, this campaign struck a serious blow for the abused ducks of France. www.viva.org.uk 21