Touchdowns and Fumbles: PETA Scores Super Bowl LVII Ads re Animal Welfare

For Immediate Release:
February 13, 2023

Contact:
David Perle 202-483-7382

PETA has been educating ad agencies and companies about the dismal living conditions and abusive training methods that wild animals forced in front of the camera endure, and the group has now broken down the big game’s commercials according to whether they were good, bad, or ugly from the animals’ perspective.

• The Good: Jeep’s realistic animation, courtesy of ad agency Highdive and production company The Mill, featuring dancing elephants, head-bobbing owls, a winking sloth, and other wild animals free to “boogie woogie“ in their natural habitats; Busch Light’s humorous nod to animal rescue from The Martin Agency, featuring a realistic VFX wolf; and Avocados From Mexico’s charming CGI prairie dog, who shared the screen with Anna Faris
• The Bad: Jon Hamm, Brie Larson, and Pete Davidson, for shilling for the cruel—as well as environmentally devastating and unhealthy—meat, egg, and dairy industries, which intensively factory farm animals in appalling filth
• The Ugly: Joel McHale’s exploitation of a real cougar, who should never be in close contact with humans, to cruelly promote his out-of-touch TV show

“While forward-thinking advertisers relied on modern approaches like CGI, VFX, or human talent for their coveted Super Bowl slot, Joel McFail shamelessly cornered the market on animal mistreatment,” says PETA Executive Vice President Tracy Reiman. “Despite a few fouls, the advertising industry largely embraced innovative and animal-free creatives for one of its biggest nights of the year, and in PETA’s playbook, that’s a win for everyone.”

Also receiving PETA kudos is Amazon’s ad encouraging families to adopt loveable mutts to help offset the loneliness and anxiety that “pandemic pups” are facing now that their guardians are returning to work and school. Not so kind to canines was Gutfeld!’s use of a French bulldog—a breathing-impaired breed deliberately bred to have airways so short that the dogs suffer from a host of painful health conditions.

PETA’s undercover investigations and law-enforcement agencies’ probes into animal suppliers for the film and TV industries have documented that animals are whipped and kept in deplorable conditions. The anguish for most of them begins shortly after birth, when they’re typically separated from their mothers and denied the maternal care that they need for normal development. As wild animals mature and become useless to trainers, many are discarded at seedy roadside zoos or other substandard facilities, where they may suffer for years without proper food or veterinary care.

PETA—whose motto reads, in part, that “animals are not ours to abuse in any way”—opposes speciesism, a human-supremacist worldview. For more information, please visit PETA.org, listen to The PETA Podcast, or follow the group on Twitter, Facebook, or Instagram.