On Vegan Education, Marketing Problems and New Year’s Resolutions

Yesterday, Elaine commented that we have a "marketing problem," and that's where I was going with this first post of the new year. The Numerati deals with this problem in a chapter called Voters, which discusses the efficiency and effectiveness of reaching voters (and which groups should be targeted).

If you have limited time and money, you're not going to focus on the people who have already expressed support for your candidate, nor are you going to focus on those who have already expressed support for the other candidate. You'll focus on the people who are undecided. I think about vegan education and blogging. Because of the way I have blogged, and it was the only thing I could do because I am who I am, what I get most often is e-mail from people who have, like me, left welfare for animal rights. And that's great. I've made every mistake in the book and I can sympathize with just about any thought problem. Those people don't often comment, though, and I can only assume it's because Animal Person appears to be a site for vegan animal rights activists only. In other words, it looks like I'm preaching to the choir. And that's a problem. I convert people around me to veganism, but it doesn't happen that often through my blog. This tells me that my blog isn't effective, yet my real-life relationship advocacy is. Unless I alter my style on Animal Person, that won't change.

One thing that has changed is I used to inadvertently invite certain "tribes" to Animal Person to take them on. I'm thinking about hunters, Iditarod types and dog racers. These tribes have no reason to read my blog or comment other than to try to waste my time or use me as a source of entertainment, so attempting to have a serious discussion with them with the intent of converting them is not time-effective for me. At the same time, there's that tiny voice that says, "What if you could convince them to change their perspective and actions?" What are the odds of that, though?

Who do I want to reach, then? Who is it possible to reach? "Vegan sympathizers?" Probably. The TNR community, the greyhound rescue community, the anti-some-other-use/abuse community that has already demonstrated interest in changing the future of at least one other kind of sentient nonhuman.

Enviros, I find, are the most difficult to deal with and come up with the most absurd objections to veganism and animal rights, and most often my time isn't well spent with them, yet I do make a go of it.

Because the nature of Animal Person is transparency regarding my own journey, that includes the way I think about vegan education and how I might be able to improve upon what I am doing and how I do it.

In The Numerati, Baker relays a phone conversation with an old college roommate–"a PhD in computer science, who probably forgets every year or two more math than I ever learned" (215).

"'Ever hear of garbage in, garbage out?' . . . [M]athematicians model misunderstandings of the world, often using the data at hand instead of chasing down the hidden facts. He tells the story of a drunk looking for his keys on a dark night under a streetlight. He's looking for them under that lamp not necessarily because he dropped them there but because it's the only place with light" (215).

I want to look everywhere, not just the places with light, to try to figure out why some people will decide that animals are somebodies and killing somebodies when you don't have to isn't right. That's my #2 New Year's Resolution.

(Number One is exacting revenge for the five–FIVE–hours of ear-splitting "fireworks" that were nothing more than noise for the sake of it, right outside my door last night. For the first time in my life I actually uttered "I wish a plague of locusts should fall upon them.")

Simultaneously, I seek to know my audience. If I'm listening, I'll notice that each nonvegan I speak with has a hot button about animals that I might be able to use as my entree into a discussion, a book, a batch of cookies, a vegan meal, and a film that might cause them to decrease their consumption of animals. And I'll take that if I can get it.