Lamar Advertising to Face PETA Pressure at Shareholder Meeting

Locally Headquartered Company Pushed to Run Group’s Pro-Animal Ads Again, Years After SeaWorld Dustup

For Immediate Release:
May 27, 2020

Contact:
David Perle 202-483-7382

“When will Lamar stop holding a grudge and start running PETA’s lifesaving ads once again?” That’s the question a PETA representative will ask Lamar Advertising executives at the locally headquartered company’s annual meeting on Thursday. PETA bought stock in Lamar in March in order to push it to overturn its policy of blocking all PETA ads, no matter how benign, including ones reminding people to bring dogs indoors during sweltering-hot and freezing-cold temperatures—an essential message in the rural parts of North Carolina and Virginia where PETA helps neglected “backyard dogs.”

PETA is upping the pressure on Lamar after being blacklisted by the company in 2017 in an apparent move to appease SeaWorld, which objected to a provocative PETA billboard calling for the release of the orca Tilikum. Since then, the organization has repeatedly offered to work with Lamar to meet any guidelines, but the company’s corporate policy has been to refuse all PETA ads about any animal welfare issue.

“By refusing our ads across the board, Lamar is denying the public vital information and stifling crucial conversations at the expense of animal welfare,” says PETA Executive Vice President Tracy Reiman. “It’s time for Lamar to get over this ridiculous grudge and start running PETA’s lifesaving billboards again.”

Lamar blocked PETA billboards blasting the Bandera Ham Rodeo in Texas and Texas A&M University’s muscular dystrophy experiments on dogs as well as an ad showing Oscar winner and PETA 2019 “Person of the Year” Joaquin Phoenix appearing with a chicken and the words “We Are All Animals. End Speciesism.”

A lack of Lamar billboards notwithstanding, PETA’s campaign against SeaWorld continues: The organization has offered interim SeaWorld CEO Marc Swanson a quarter of a million dollars to help build a seaside sanctuary for the orcas and other dolphins in the company’s beleaguered abusement parks, which have furloughed 90% of employees and are currently closed to visitors.

PETA—whose motto reads, in part, that “animals are not ours to use for entertainment or abuse in any other way”—opposes speciesism, which is a human-supremacist worldview. For more information, please visit PETA.org.