‘Behind the Leather’ Wins Gold Lions at Cannes!

Posted on 28 June 2016 at 5:00PM by PETA Australia

At the 2016 Cannes Lions International Festival of Creativity, advertising agency Ogilvy & Mather took home a total of five Lions, including two Gold Lions for design as well as a Bronze Lion for the “Promo & Activation” category for its “Behind the Leather” campaign for PETA Asia. The ad agency was also awarded a Gold Lion and a Silver Lion for the “Media” category for the video.

CONGRATS @Ogilvy Bangkok and Meour Bangkok win Gold for @PETAAsia with “Behind the Leather” #CannesLions
— Cannes Lions (@Cannes_Lions) June 22, 2016

Earlier this year, Ogilvy & Mather launched a shocking pop-up shop in one of Bangkok’s hippest shopping malls to show consumers the suffering behind every exotic-skin bag, belt, jacket, and pair of gloves or shoes. To do this, it created mechanical look-alikes of beating hearts, intestines and other animal body parts inside bags, jackets, shoes and belts.

This video captures the reactions of some of the people who entered the shop:

Thailand has the world’s largest crocodile farming industry and is the prime destination for international fashion brands looking for skins. About 700,000 crocodiles are raised in crowded tanks or pools of fetid, stinking water on 22 large-scale and 929 small farms across the country.

Snakes killed for their skins are commonly nailed to trees, and their bodies are cut open from one end to the other as they are skinned alive. Their mutilated bodies are then discarded, but because of these animals’ slow metabolism, it can take hours for them to die. Lizards are often decapitated, and others writhe in agony as the skin is ripped from their bodies.

PETA Asia’s gruesome pop-up shop highlighted to shoppers that the only way to keep blood and guts out of our closets is to choose vegan clothing, shoes and accessories.