A recent trip to South Africa clearly showed the Breaking The Brand team that very few people understood the nature of the demand or the users of genuine rhino horn. This is obviously very concerning since the South African government appears to be actively pursuing a trade legalisation agenda and they are creating risk-benefit models for pro/anti trade decisions based on incomplete information. Significantly, not enough people are asking the right questions: “Whilst we know that horns can be harvested for sale, are these the rhino horns that the wealthy users, driving the poaching of wild rhinos, will want to buy? Are farmed horns a substitute product for horns from wild rhinos to the primary [...]

Buddha’s ‘Birthday’ Celebration and Festival - Viet Nam 25 May 2015. Today in Viet Nam Buddhists come together to celebrate Vesak 2559. To Westerners this is often called Buddha’s Birthday. Buddha stressed that the way to pay homage to him on this day was not merely by offering flowers, incense and lights, but by truly and sincerely striving to follow his teachings. So this celebration is an opportunity to reflect: Am I really following the Buddha's teaching? The day celebrates enlightenment – which can be defined as the full realization of the truth of the Buddha's teachings. When I was in Viet Nam in October 2014, I asked a number of people if high profile Buddhist [...]

Introduction In October 2014 I had the pleasure of meeting Trang Nguyen a Vietnamese conservationist and the Founder/Director of Vietnamese based NGO WildAct (http://www.wildact-vn.org).  I was in Hanoi to review the response the BTB’s pilot RhiNo campaign; Trang and I spent a day together talking about our observations of the complexities of the rhino conservation – supply – demand chain. As we talked we walked around the streets of the old town, past traditional medicine shops. Trang patiently translated any rhino marketing materials, some promoting the rhino horn grinding dish while others had notices saying it was illegal to sell rhino horn. Since then we have collaborated on a Lunar New Year [...]

While visiting Hanoi and Ho Chi Minh City late last year as part of Breaking The Brand’s rhino horn demand reduction efforts I was stuck by the beauty of the two Vietnamese cities. The trees where the primary reason that Hanoi instantaneously became one of my all-time favourite cities. So I was shocked to hear in April that Hanoi was considering cutting down 6,700 trees, more than a quarter of all its trees. Local newspapers moved into action uncovering that lucrative licences had been given to cut down the trees, sell the timber and plant 6,700 replacement trees! A handful of people stood to make a lot of money from this. So [...]

Breaking The Brand is a volunteer organisation that doesn’t currently have the funds to do substantial evaluations. But that doesn’t mean that we haven’t tried to evaluate the response to our pilot campaign in Viet Nam.  In early 2014, long before our pilot campaign was launched, we approached an international company with offices in Viet Nam to ask if we could interview senior managers in Hanoi and Ho Chi Minh City. To clarify: The managers were Vietnamese citizens The interviews would be voluntary and no personal information would be collected In volunteering for the interviews, this in no way indicated that the interviewee was a rhino horn user, simply that they were part of the demographic group that [...]

When we started Breaking The Brand it was because we saw a lack of focus on the root cause of rhino poaching and wildlife crime in general, namely the end user. Similarly, the work that was being done on the demand side in the main did not resonate with the primary users of genuine rhino horn. All the work undertaken from anti-poaching measures to dehorning, though absolutely necessary or worth trying, in effect tackle the symptoms and not the root cause. However, after recent work in both Viet Nam and South Africa, the Breaking The Brand leadership team has found itself debating if the root cause driving the current rhino poaching tragedy has shifted, and we [...]

The market for wild animals, both illegal and endangered, has changed significantly in recent years. It is essential that the responses needed to contain escalating demand evolve in answer to the new tactics of the wildlife traffickers. In the last few decades many large conservation bodies have accepted, to some degree, the commoditisation of wildlife with the aim to reduce human-wildlife conflict. With the rapid acceleration of wealth in Asia the demand for many of these ‘products’ has spiralled out of control to the point where there is a real chance of iconic species such as rhinos, tigers, elephants and lions being driven to extinction in the wild on our watch. The current skills and experience of the [...]

Breaking The Brand’s supporters do it again - Vietnamese New Year Campaign ‘Will your luck run out?’ went live on the 16th January 2015. To follow up from our successful pilot campaign ‘Is it worth the risk?’, the Breaking The Brand project team has created a campaign for Vietnamese New Year or Tet. This could not have been done without our supporters in Australia and worldwide who donated the funds to run full-page adverts in key business, lifestyle and women's magazines for 5 weeks leading up to the lunar New Year on the 19th February 2015. This includes a full-page advert in Heritage Magazine, the in-flight magazine of Viet Nam Airlines throughout February, a time when many wealthy Vietnamese are [...]

It is no secret that the South African Government has approved the submission to the next CITES conference, scheduled to take place in 2016 in South Africa, to introduce a regulated international trade in rhino horn. Backing this approach are a number of pro-trade lobby groups. Even through the commonly held belief is that it is unlikely to be permitted, pro-trade trade groups will spend the time leading up to the October 2016 conference trying to prove that a legalised trade in rhino horn is the only way to save the animal. One of the final things to stand in their way is a successful demand reduction approach to stop rhino poaching. The conservation industry has an 18 [...]

Over the last 6 months I have forgotten how many times I have recommended to my contacts in the conservation industry to watch the BBC series ’The Men Who Made Us Spend’ and in particular Episode 2. In this episode Jacques Peretti explores how fear has a powerful hold over our behaviours – and how this has been exploited by those who want to sell us products and services. He meets the men who sold us cigarettes, SUVs, soap, and even bottled water off the back of our anxieties – and our desire to have those anxieties banished. The strategies and techniques used to manipulate us to spend are the same ones that can be used to manipulate the users [...]