The PR Brief

Today me and Ruth met up to finalise our parts for the pitch and put the finishing touches to the brief that we will be answering.

Sea Shepherd PR brief

Dolphin Awareness

The aim from PR activity:

To increase the education among the youth population in Japan on the value of dolphins as well as the dolphin hunting that happens around Japan. Create an interactive campaign that young people can get involved with and learn from.

About the business:

Established in 1977, Sea Shepherd Conservation Society (SSCS) is an international non-profit, marine wildlife conservation organization. Our mission is to end the destruction of habitat and slaughter of wildlife in the world's oceans in order to conserve and protect ecosystems and species.

Sea Shepherd uses innovative direct-action tactics to investigate, document, and take action when necessary to expose and confront illegal activities on the high seas. By safeguarding the biodiversity of our delicately-balanced ocean ecosystems, Sea Shepherd works to ensure their survival for future generations.

http://www.seashepherd.org/

Japan:

Japans relationship with dolphin hunting is steeped in history, in 1600 Taiji sent the first boats out for whale hunting in Japan. But in recent history there has been marked concern about the health implications of consuming dolphin meat. It has been noted that dolphin meat contains high mercury content and this has caused a 50% rise in the death toll, in areas where the meat is consumed on a regular basis.

The implications of the dolphin hunting on the eco-system are notable; dolphins do not spawn as rapidly as fish thus there population is being depleted. It is estimated that every year 20,000 dolphins are hunted in Japan for blubber, meat and fertilizer, there has been strict regulations enforced to help prevent unnecessary killing of the mammals. However there is a lot of the meat left over and despite cutting prices by up to 50% there is a great deal of waste.

The Cove, a documentary filmed in Taiji has caused outrage amongst westerners, yet there is still very little knowledge of the hunting throughout Japan. A year after the release of the film, it was dubbed in Japanese and sent to every house in Taiji in an attempt to raise awareness. This caused some outrage for those who watched it but it was ignored by a significant number of people.

Marketing Activity:

Currently activity from the Sea Shepherds has been to gather information on the fishermen’s activities and ensuring that no international laws are broken.

Target audience:

The audience is broad looking at 16-26 year olds in Japan.

Timescale:

This is a long-term campaign over two years.

Budget:

The budget is £10,000 for the two years.

Monday 14th March

Meeting with Megan

Today was our meeting with Megan to establish where we were and what we wanted to do. This was a helpful discussion that gave us plenty of food for thought and has enabled us to progress to the next level.

The Results

In our meeting it was poached that we may be attempting too much in one campaign therefore we decided to focus it on young people aged 16-28 at University or College. We also have given a lot of thought into how to make our presentation stand out, so alongside our pitch document will be our press pack that will give a view of what we want to do for our client. We have also given a lot of thought for the questions we will be asked by the panel.

Rosie and Cates campaign

Today we also had the feedback from Rosie and Cate's campaign ideas, which were brilliant. With some minor adjustment to our new target audience we were able to focus on a Viral campaign that will run a competition. The idea is to go right back to basics and ensure that everyone is educated on the benefits of dolphins and the damage that is being done in Taiji, using the huge culture of technology we will be initiating a campaign that begins from a competition for those who have a camera and can get involved. The idea is that college and university students make a film that documents the benefits of dolphins and what is happening in Taiji in a creative film. These will then be judged by Japanese people and the winner will get a prize. Alongside this will be an app and a micro-site where you can find all the information.

The brief

The brief that I wrote last week has now changed since the change in age and the change from a policy changing campaign to an attitude changing one.

LBB

Little Black Book

The idea that we would be pitching an idea to a panel of Sea Shepherds, gave us the option of developing a PR consultancy that would possibly be pitching we came up with LBB who are skilled at B2B PR, Conservation PR and Technology PR. This we felt would establish a good scope for us to work from.

Friday 11th March

Today we had our first group meeting since we have established the main idea and the research to go with it. First point of call was to check everyone was happy and knew exactly what they were doing. Once this was established we moved onto discussing the ideas we had had. As the meeting progressed and the knowledge that we had gleaned was discussed, we were able to establish that we were aiming to high when we wanted to convert the whole of Japan into dolphin loving policy changing people. Therefore we changed it to policy changes in Taiji and that would be the focus of the first leg of the campaign. After much more discussion we looked at what we could do as the staples of the pitch. We wanted to make sure that what we said got noticed, we came up with the idea of a pitch document that would be created by those who were not doing the talking on the day of the presentation: Aimee, Rosie and Emilie. Not because we don't want their lovely voices heard, we felt that the voice of LBB, our PR consultancy, would be much more fluent if three people spoke, one from each team.

What we did with the research

From the research that myself and Aimee gathered, we established the people we would be pitching the campaign to and enough information to establish the first lines of a brief. Previously we had looked at aiming our campaign to the Oceanic Preservation Society, though the research showed that there was a lot more being done by the Sea Shepherds, who have positioned Cove Guardians. We felt that they provided us with a good position to aim for, establishing the target company gave our work more substance as we were able to focus on how to engage them.

Yet we also had to stay focused on the larger audience, Japan. Rick O'Berry who has put a lot of his time, money and energy into stopping the hunts stated that targeting the whole of Japan would be a mistake and would inevitably lead to cultural imperialism. This was the next rung on my research ladder as the term had not been something that I had a deep knowledge of and since it has been established as a norm of Westerners then this the next hurdle to leap over to ensure the campaign is effective.

References

EARTH TRUST, Appedix 2, Some of the Major Laws Protecting Endangered Wildlife, http://www.earthtrust.org/wlcurric/appen2.html#anchor16068834, accessed 10/3/11

EARTH TRUST, Dolphins, http://www.earthtrust.org/wlcurric/dolphins.html, accessed 10/3/11

SEA SHEPHERD, Dolphins, http://www.seashepherd.org/dolphins/, accessed 10/3/11 (There are multiple pages in the Cove Guardians diaries, as well as the points in Taiji, Japan.)

WORLD CHARTER FOR NATURE, http://eelink.net/~asilwildlife/wcn.html, 1982, accessed 10/3/11

ALABASTER, Jay, Japan Times, Taiji Mayor Defends Dolphin Hunt, http://search.japantimes.co.jp/cgi-bin/nn20100824a3.html, published 24/08/2010, accessed 10/03/2011

O'BERRY, Rick, Save Japan's Dolphin, An Early End to Japan's Whaling Season and What it Means for Dolphins, http://savejapandolphins.org/blog/post/an-early-end-to-japans-whaling-season-and-what-it-means-for-dolphins,  published 22/02/2011, accessed 10/03/2011

DEHNERT, Andy, Reality Blurred, The Cove Documentrary May have Stopped Dolphin Slaughter in Japan, http://www.realityblurred.com/realitytv/archives/film_documentary/2009_Sep_03_the_cove, published 3/09/2009, accessed, 10/03/2011

MCCURRY, Justin, The Guardian, Dolphin Slaughter Turns Sea Red as Japan's Hunting Season Returns, http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2009/sep/14/dolphin-slaughter-hunting-japan-taiji, published 14/09/2009, accessed 10/03/2011

NATIONAL PARKS CONSERVATION ASSOCIATION, Dolphins, http://www.npca.org/marine_and_coastal/marine_wildlife/dolphin.html, accessed 10/03/2011

Dolphin Research

Since my last blog, Ruth and Emilie gave a detailed account of Japan, the culture and their media consumption. Following this myself and Aimee have delved into the dolphins themselves and Japan's perceptions of them. We have also looked at the statutory implications of dolphin hunting and the various conservation groups that are already trying to put a stop to dolphin hunting.

Dolphins

In the eastern tropical Pacific the population is estimated to be 243,500, while in the waters of Japan the population estimates are as low as 37,000. However this is an estimate for bottlenose dolphins, the exact figure of all dolphins is unknown (National Parks Conservation Association, 2011). 

Previous threats have been from Tuna fishing as for some unknown reason Tuna fish generally swim below dolphins. As dolphins are easily noticeable fisherman track them placing a net around the school, the net does not allow dolphins an easy escape. In 1990 after the introduction of "Dolphin Safe" Tuna 97% of dolphin deaths were stopped (Earth Trust, 2011).


Dolphin Hunting

In Japan, Striped, Spotted, Risso's, and Bottlenose dolphins are most commonly hunted. The Japanese town of Taiji on the Kii peninsula is as of now the only town in Japan where drive hunting still takes place on a large scale. Japan's National Institute of Population and Social Security Research, reports that the mortality rate for Taiji and nearby Koazagawa, where dolphin meat is also consumed, is over 50% higher than the rate for similarly-sized villages throughout Japan (National Parks Conservation Association, 2011).

Since the 1600's whaling and dolphin hunting has been part of the small village in Taiji and after whaling was banned in Japan, the fishermen turned their hunting skills to dolphins and porpoises to replace the meat and blubber that was lost (Alabaster, 2010).  Some estimates state that 23,000 dolphins are killed around Japan each hunting season (September - March). (Sea Shepherds, 2011)

Because porpoises and dolphin reproduce at a much slower rate than fish they have all but disappeared off the coast of Japan and many of the fisheries that harvested them have gone out of business (World Charter for Nature, 2011). Some of the dolphins herded near Taiji are sold for as much as $150,000 to animal trainers for ocean parks (McCurry, 2009). Those that are killed are sold for their meat at about $600 a head. Defenders of the slaughter argue that it is their tradition and what they do is no worse than the killing pigs and cattle in slaughterhouses (Sea Shepherd, 2011). 

The Hunters

To catch the dolphins, 25 fisherman take to the waters in boats to find schools of dolphins, once they have them in their sights, they are surrounded, the fishermen then bang metal poles together to disrupt the sonar they are then herded into the cove for the slaughter (Sea Shepherd, 2011). But one fisherman told the Los Angeles Times that they have got better at killing the dolphins than in the mid 2000's:

“Killing in groups, we often missed our mark right behind the dolphin’s head. They die more slowly. There was too much blood. It didn’t look good, and the meat didn’t taste as good.” Now dolphins are separated and killed individually. He said they now hit their mark “99.9 percent” of the time. “I know the spot,” he said. “I can make a kill in 10 seconds.” Though this is just a way of life for these fisherman, and the often describe the efforts from westerners as "Cultural Imperialism". (O'Berry, 2011)

Animal Rights Activists/ism

Rick O'Berry, formally the trainer of the dolphins used in flipper, he is the main force behind the activism in Taiji. Animal rights groups have tried to disrupt the hunts and discourage the sale of dolphin meat which they say contains 3.5 times the amount of mercury contamination permitted in food. Activists from the Whaleman Foundation, including Hayden Panettiere, an 18-year-old actress on the American television show Heroes, have paddled out on surfboards to fishing boats engaged in the dolphin to voice their opposition. Panettiere left Japan soon after she participated but was promptly slapped with an arrest warrant. (Dehnert, 2009)

"The Cove" is the film that has inspired this project, from the activism group the Oceanic Preservation Society and Sea Shepherds financed by billionaire owner of Netscape and filmed by National Geographic photographer Louis Psihoyos. This film details the explicit story of the dolphin hunting in Taiji, showing the perceptions of the Japanese people, the politicians, the fishermen and the activists, this is a detailed account of the ongoing suffering and the ongoing effort to stop this. (Denhert, 2009)

Many Japanese are not aware of the slaughter. The Cove was released free on the Internet in Japanese to help enlighten them. Activist are trying to get residents of Taiji to stop eating dolphin and whale. One way they are attempting to do this is by informing them of the dangers of consuming high levels of mercury in dolphins and whales and carrying out mercury poisoning checks on the town’s residents. (Sea Shepherd, 2011)

Laws and Statutory implications (All from Earth Trust Appendix 2, 2011)

International Dolphin Conservation Act (IDCA) (1992, US) Stops hunting in the US of Dolphins for personal and consumer purposes.

Marine Mammal Protection Act (MMPA) (1992, US) Stops the accidental killing of Dolphins (when fishing for yellow fin tuna)

International Laws:

 

Convention on International Trade of Endangered Species of Wild Fauna and Flora (1975) this is an international treaty that can be signed by a country that adheres to its rules and regulations.

See below for all the information, couldn’t say it better my self

http://www.earthtrust.org/wlcurric/appen2.html#anchor16068834

Final thought

Rick O’Berry – Cultural Imperalism kicks in when the Japanese are attacked on the Cull of dolphins. There is no point attacking Japan, should address the people in Taiji. (O'Berry, 2011)