The Secret Lives of Animals: PETA & the community

Cora Perez
Associate Creative Director the community
 

Tell us about your role in the creation of this work.

I worked as Associate Creative Director for this project, creating and executing this campaign. But “The Secret Lives of Animals” is the result of teamwork. Everyone involved put their hearts into it, and that was key to making this campaign happen.

 

Give us an overview of the campaign, what is it about?

This sound book shows the sounds animals really make in today’s world through six powerful, shocking tales. These sounds aren’t exactly easy listening, even for adults. Everything in the book, from the stories to the sounds, is real.

 

Tell us about the details creative brief, what did it ask?

PETA’s main goal is to stop animal cruelty. We all know where leather comes from and what nuggets are made of, but it’s way easier to keep thinking that animals still live happily and freely than face the reality. This campaign needed to break that mental barrier and remind people of the horror animals face.

 

Which insight led to the creation of this piece of work?

Animal sounds are one of the first things we learn in life. Some of us have kids and, now that it’s time for them to read an animal sounds book, realized they are all wrong. Today, a world where pigs run free going oink oink and cows go moo on the farm is simply fiction. We thought that, to start putting an end to animal cruelty, we needed to tell the true story of how animals really live and sound nowadays.  In a way, we believe that it’s important that parents face the world that they are leaving for their kids.

 

What was the greatest challenge that you and your team faced during development?

The biggest challenge we faced was finding the animal sounds because all of them are real. They were recorded on industrial farms, aquariums, labs, etc. Most of them were recorded undercover by PETA activists or just ordinary people.

 

What did you enjoy most about seeing this campaign through? Did you learn anything new from the experience?

Bringing this campaign to life has been an emotional rollercoaster. On the one hand, we had to go deep into all kind of tortures that animals suffer today at human hands. That’s not pleasant; sometimes, you are tempted to just look away or stop digging into reality.

On the other hand, we knew we were doing something good, collaborating to put an end to animal cruelty. Putting out a piece of work that you like is always great and, in this case, we like the work and love the cause, so even better. We’re 100% committed to PETA, and I guess that is what leaves us with this good feeling in seeing the book published.

View a digital copy of the book here. PETA is also selling hard copies of the book on PETA.org here.