No one should be surprised about the South African governments legislation to allow a domestic trade in rhino horn. It has been very clear from the beginning that trade in rhino horn is what they support and want. What is troubling is how easy they got it, with little resistance from large conservation, international agencies or governments. While there has been a lot of ‘noise’ there hasn’t been much substance to the arguments put forward. Most discussions have been ideological and, while there is nothing wrong with that, they are not enough. I am sure that they feel that there has been a lot of behind-the-scenes diplomacy, but it seems they were played. As someone who has been [...]

“Honesty is a very expensive gift. Don’t expect it from cheap people”. This is just one of Warren Buffett’s quotes highlighted in Breaking The Brand’s Vietnamese New Year RhiNo campaign: The Gift Of Bad Luck. When Breaking The Brand started interviewing the wealthy users of rhino horn in 2013 we asked them who they were influenced by. Bill Gates, Warren Buffet, Richard Branson, Bill Clinton, Barack Obama were the answers. We first presented these findings publicly in March 2014 at the Zoo and Aquarium Association (ZAA) Annual Conference held in New Zealand and and we expanded on it in an October 2014 blog: Giving up rhino horn to be accepted into a higher status group. So, given our [...]

Did you know it took Esso 36 years from launching the “Put a tiger in your tank” slogan in 1959 to supporting tiger conservation in 1995 – the rhino hasn’t got this long! In recent months Breaking The Brand volunteers have created a database of over 700 companies, worldwide, who use a rhino as part of their name and/or logo. From Australia to the USA, the UK and continental Europe to India and the African continent, many companies have benefited from their association with the rhinoceros. It has helped build a distinct company identity and brand conveying uniqueness, determination and strength. These companies may not have thought, when choosing the rhino as a logo that one [...]

Today I find myself reading yet another article supposedly exploring the case for a legal trade in rhino horn. Over the last 3 years I have lost count of how many of these I have read, with titles such as: Would a legal trade in rhino horn save the rhino? I decided to undertake an analysis of media articles that covered the trade topic, focusing on just the last 18 months. Of the 40 news articles I read, just one made mention of the user's preference for a wild product over farmed horn. The reality is, a fundamental question appears to have been forgotten! How is the media missing this? On purpose? This comes at an interesting time [...]

Over the last couple of years, Breaking The Brand has fielded many questions about our adverts using negative messaging and emotions. Since the launch of our campaigns we have had people in the rhino conservation space tell us what we do is ‘too hard hitting’, ‘racist’ and ‘would offend our donors’. I mentioned more about this in our Second Year Report. Similarly, there is a belief in many circles that all messages should be positive, don’t upset people, people only learn and change when they are positively engaged. This mindset is pervasive; it is also naïve and just plain wrong. If this were true, then from a media perspective why don’t anti-smoking adverts show happy people playing with [...]

With one day to go before the start of CoP17, below is a reflection and comment on some of the articles and submissions I have read leading up to the CITES meeting. While there is much in the Time Magazine article (featured on the left) to like – it is one of the best I have seen - it also misses a couple of critical points about why Viet Nam’s (illegal) trade in rhino horn hasn’t been closed down sooner. The Vietnamese Government’s demonstrated lack of commitment to close down the demand for and the trafficking of rhino horn cannot be decoupled from the fact that a future legalised international trade has not been decisively ruled [...]

As Breaking The Brand’s supporters know, our focus is demand reduction for rhino horn. This focus remains, but as a result of the recent elephant census we decided to demonstrate the type of campaign we could create to target just one group of ivory consumers. Ivory Buyers in China On page 26 of Breaking The Brand’s second annual report, published in April 2015, I mentioned reading an article in Virgin Australia’s Voyeur magazine which stated, "Nouveau riche around the world are realising that opulent displays of wealth doesn’t necessarily bestow class or taste." The solution? Etiquette classes with royal protocol expert William Hanson who is teaching wealthy Chinese women everything from ‘pastry skills’ to ‘how [...]

If the Strategy Doesn’t Work, Change the Strategy More and more people are questioning the lack of success of the sustainable use of wildlife model. Similarly, many are examining the policies of large conservation bodies which use trade to minimize human-wildlife conflict with the aim to save wildlife and natural environments. After decades of these policies, we are losing wildlife in staggering numbers, natural environments at alarming rates and little has been done to address poverty. Why are we still talking about legalising trade in endangered species and betting on a prescription that has failed over-and-over again? The conservation sector has not been able to halt or reverse over exploitation of resources. Dominant neoliberal ideology insists [...]

As many of you know, I have long asked the people who believe in legalising the international trade in rhino horn to produce their business case and user analysis. The reason I have asked these questions is that since I started interviewing the primary users of rhino horn, driving the current rhino killing spree, it became apparent straight away that they don’t see horn from a farmed rhino as a substitute product. I wrote about this in: https://natureneedsmore.org/farmed-rhino-horn-not-seen-as-substitute-product/ As I say in the blog: When I was in South Africa earlier this year (Feb 2015) all my meetings clearly showed that very few people understood the nature of the demand or the users of genuine rhino horn. [...]