Vegetarian Commercials

[Cartman]

I know we were discussing the animal rights issue a week ago or so. It just all of a sudden ocurred to me that I have never seen a commercial advertizing vegetarian products on TV. It's kind of odd because with all these vegetarians popping up everywhere, you'd think they'd start showing commercials like these.

[Aquadementia]

Seems like there used to be commercials for Boca burgers. They and some other companies support some programs on PBS and NPR.
The tag line was "makes meat lovers salivate, vegetarians celebrate" or something.

[Ed Liu]

Howdy,

Well, based on the prior discussion, it was clear that all vegetarians are rabid, pushy, radical, left-of-Dennis-Kuchinich (http://www.denniskucinich.us/index.php?topic=blog) (vegetarian himself...hmmmm), Communist, anti-intellectual, ideologically mistaken, and undernourished hippie freaks, so I'd wager that vegetarian advertising would have the opposite effect of what was intended because they all think Companies Are Evil, and all advertising is ideologically and morally wrong.

:D:D:D:D:D:D:D:D

The honest answer is that you're probably looking in the wrong places. According to this page (http://www.vrg.org/journal/vj2003issue3/vj2003issue3poll.htm), 4-10% of Americans call themselves vegetarian, and they estimate 30-40% of the American market is amenable to vegetarian products. With numbers like that (which may even be inflated, since it is a vegetarian advocacy organization), it's no big surprise that most vegetarian companies opt for focused advertising over huge campaigns. You'll find vegetarian product ads all over the place in vegetarian (http://www.vegetariantimes.com/)and organic (http://www.organicstyle.com/)magazines, and in selected religious mags like Tricycle (http://www.tricycle.com/new.php?p=home).

It's also a question of money. A lot of vegetarian companies are in it for ideological reasons as much or more than for financial ones, so none of them are exactly rolling around in dough to spend on advertising that's not going to make an impact on 60-70% of America yet.

-- Ed/Ace