Over the past two years, Mercy For Animals has been hard at work conducting original research with the purpose of increasing the effectiveness of our programs, and the results are in. Drum roll, please.
One in-depth study analyzed the effectiveness of Facebook posts. We discovered posting more videos, writing posts with fewer than 10 words, and posting content with baby animals or with farmed and companion animals together significantly increased reach.
A more recent study analyzed which kinds of pro-veg videos are best at inspiring changes in diets and attitudes. We tested 12 different viral videos created by Mercy For Animals against a control video, and placed them into four categories: cute (videos with cute animals), lifestyle (videos describing how to eat vegan), cruel (videos with only animal cruelty footage), and comparison (videos that explicitly compare happy and suffering farmed animals).
The results are fascinating. Comparison and cruel videos worked best at inspiring individuals to reduce their meat consumption. In fact, comparison videos created three times as much intention to reduce meat consumption as cute videos and lifestyle videos, and 30 percent more intention to reduce consumption than cruel videos.
Cool stuff, right? Check out our research blog to read more of our original research, and keep an eye out for new studies that will be posted in the coming months!