Farmed Rhino Horn Not Seen As Substitute Product
As people who say we care about rhinos we need to make a decision to get smarter faster if we really want to save these animals from extinction in the wild. I have several reasons for making this statement, for now I will focus on just two or three. This...
Chinese Cultural Evolution Aids Behaviour Change
If I was Chinese I would be disgusted that a group of people lobbying to legalise the trade in rhino horn where pushing a message that I was ‘stuck in a cultural mindset’ that would never enable me, my society or my country to evolve or change.
The propaganda this...
Explaining The Spiral Dynamics Model
Since launching Breaking The Brand in 2013 and highlighting the Spiral Dynamics, behaviour change, Model we use to create our rhino horn demand reduction campaigns in Viet Nam, we have constantly been asked for more information on the model and how it works. I wrote an introductory blog about the...
Discomfort Triggers Behaviour Change
The Breaking The Brand team feels very privileged that more groups are contacting us to ask about the behaviour change models we use; from the start we have been very happy to share our techniques and ideas. So as more animal welfare and wildlife groups are looking at how to...
Desire To Supply Rhino Horn Drives Manufacture Of Demand
“Sales tricks are what you use to sell something to someone who doesn’t even know they want it.” The Salesman’s Mantra! As we discussed in a Blog from March 2015, Conservation vs. Wildlife Traffickers. Who do you think will win the war in wildlife crime?!, wildlife traffickers can increasingly be...
If the users REALLY wanted farmed rhino horn why isn’t Viet Nam farming their own?
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...
“When a man has pity on all living creatures then only is he noble.” – Buddha
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...
Guest Blog: Trang Nguyen, Founder/Director, WildAct Viet Nam
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...
What do Hanoi’s Trees and Kruger National Park’s Rhinos Have In Common?
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...
How To Elicit And Measure Behaviour That People Don’t Easily Admit To
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...
Trade Legalisation Debate – The New Root Cause of Rhino Poaching?
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...
Conservation vs. Wildlife Traffickers. Who do you think will win the war in wildlife crime?!
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...