THE MURDER KING CAMPAIGN

by PETA- the analysis of Communication Controlling

THE ICM Inc. group:

Ana GabrščekJessica AlbersGrzegorz Toś

Sabina MerharNic RoggeveenJanja BrčičMaria Radziejowska

CONTENT

INTRODUCTION...................................................3

ABOUT PETA....................................................3CONTROVERSIAL TACTICS.........................................3

COMMUNICATION CONTROLLING ANALYSIS.............................4

INPUT LEVEL...................................................4OUTCOME LEVEL.................................................8OUTFLOW – VALUE CREATION.....................................13

CONCLUSIONS...................................................16

REFERENCES....................................................17

2

INTRODUCTION

ABOUT PETA

People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals (PETA) is the

largest animal rights organization in the world, with more than 3

million members and supporters and is located in Norfolk USA.

PETA focuses its attention on the four areas in which the

largest numbers of animals suffer the most intensely for the

longest periods of time: on factory farms, in the clothing trade,

in laboratories, and in the entertainment industry. Their

guideline is: ''Animals are not ours to eat, wear, experiment on,

use for entertainment, or abuse in any way.'' It employs nearly

300 people worldwide. PETA is a nonprofit, tax-exempt corporation

funded almost exclusively by the contributions of their members.

3

CONTROVERSIAL TACTICS

PETA’s mission is to get the animal rights message out to as

many people as possible. It must rely largely on free

"advertising" through media coverage. They will do extraordinary

things to get the word out about animal cruelty because they have

learned from experience that the media do not consider the

terrible facts about animal suffering alone interesting enough to

cover. Thus, they try to make their actions colorful and

controversial, thereby grabbing headlines around the world and

spreading the message of kindness to animals to thousands—

sometimes millions—of people. This approach has proved amazingly

successful: In the three decades since PETA was founded, it has

grown into one of the largest animal rights group in the country.

They have also had major groundbreaking successes, such as

contributing to implementation of Federal Humane Slaughter Act in

the case called “Murder King”, which we investigated in our

paper.

COMMUNICATION CONTROLLING ANALYSIS

INPUT LEVEL

4

In our paper we’ve analysed the campaign MURDER KING, which

is one of PETA's campaigns against fast food. They started Murder

King campaign to announce new guidelines for Burger King’s meat and egg

suppliers and therefore improve animal welfare in food industry. The campaign was

held in USA in 2001 that lasted for 6 months. People employed in

campaign were PETA employees as well as voluntary activists.

Murder King campaign was probably funded out of so called

“Cruelty-Free Merchandise Program” budget (worth approximately

$700,000 altogether in 2001 - this number is only an evaluation

out of last year’s financial report where Cruelty-Free

Merchandise Program was worth $787,681).

Internal output is simply said as a performance of the

actual organization. “It is about how efficient communicative

offers are produced and about the quality of the delivered

communication products or services” (Huhn et al. 2011, 13). The

efficiency of Murder King therefore can be demonstrated through

budget compliance, throughput times and the quality of

communicative activities. The most important however is internal

communication and satisfaction of the internal clients. After all

“the higher the efficiency and effectiveness of communication

processes, the greater the impact on value creation” (Huhn et al.

2011, 13).

From 2011 tax exempt we see that PETA got 492.883 dollars

for federated campaigns and spent no money on promotion and

advertising (PETA 2011). That revenue was fully intended for

5

campaigns only. In the time when Murder King became one of a

major anti fast food campaigns estimated expenses were probably

around 100.000 to half a million dollars alone. However, the

campaign was short and most of the expenses were materials for

awareness and demonstrations like leaflets, brochures,

literature, etc. and even demonstrations hadn't been carried out

in full effect. Out of 800 intended demonstrations only a dozen

of them occurred. All in all, we can estimate that budget wasn't

overspent and did comply with costs.

The shortness of campaign is also important part of

throughput time. Definition of it is “rate at which the system

generates money through sales” (Cox and Goldratt 2004, 66). But

in our case where organization is more about awareness and non-

profit we can describe it as the rate at which an organization

reaches a given goal. Murder King campaign started in January

2001 after failed negotiations in October 2000 and lasted 6

months. In the middle of January 2001 PETA published public

letter in which they announced their campaign towards Burger

King. In the following months it distributed its literature,

leaflets and other materials on Murder King. Around 800

demonstrations were scheduled throughout March in numerous

American states. As stated before only dozen of them occurred. In

the same month Burger King started negotiations with PETA and on

28th June 2001 campaign was called off due to Burger King's

acceptance of new standards. Throughput time of Murder King was

relatively short and thus it shows how efficient and productive

6

the campaign really was. They managed to persuade Burger King

faster than they had planned.

One of indicators of campaigns effectiveness and quality is

readability. We analyzed their public letter about the 'victory'

against Murder King (PETA 2002) and estimated that the audience

needed to be at least on college level of reading to understand

what PETA tried to say to them (estimation was made by analysing

fog index which measures the complexity of the text). Index shows

as well the quality of writers work and consecutively PETA's

campaign. Due to the time of publishing we can claim that this

article could be written by the same people therefore we can also

make an assertion about its fog index.

However all this communicative activities and campaign work

would not be effective without good internal communication. We

can view it as communication between employees and leadership or

as communication between organization and donors. Crucial

variable determining organizational success is successful

managing of people's communication and the quality of

communication between people within an organization (Henderson

and McAdam 2003, 775).

Probably one of most important part of internal

output is satisfaction of internal clients which could be

described as organization's ability to generate genuine teamwork

among all departments in organization and emphasize customer

service as everyone's responsibility. Each individual must

improve what is around them and look for ways to satisfy the

7

requirements of others in organization. These interrelationships

create dependence among functional units. Internal clients or

customers must be identified along with its needs and

expectations in order for the functional units to provide outputs

(Credit Research Foundation 1999). In the Murder King campaign

functional groups had to be coordinated to be so efficient. With

its 300 employees PETA relies on the interdependence within and

between its departments. If there was no genuine teamwork, the

whole campaign would fall apart. But it did not and the campaign

was good in terms of organization’s satisfaction of internal

clients.

The external output, according to Communication Controlling

model (Huhn et al. 2011, 13) concerns all the communicative

offers addressed to the relevant stakeholders. Therefore, what

should be measured is the success of communication products in

terms of availability for the targeted audiences. That is why

“typical metrics include visits to corporate websites, or the

media presence of a company” (Huhn et al. 2011, 13).

As People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals (PETA) admits

itself, its methods of communications are “as varied as the

animals [they] protect and the myriad ways that people abuse

them” (PETA 2007). Murder King campaign included working with

legislators,, government officials, the scientific community,

corporations and grassroots activists – everything in order to

stop abusive practices.

What is more, according to Allison Enright’s opinion in the

8

“Marketing News”: “People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals

(PETA) has a powerful stable of public relations tactics it uses

to propel its message to the public: from celebrity endorsements

to traveling displays of animal abuse to creative on-site

demonstrations” (Enright 2005, 13).

Considering the Murder King campaign, which lasted only a

few months and ended in June 2001 (PETA 2007), it turned out to

be a great success. However, PETA’s traditional tactics were not

fully applied due to the Burger King’s quick response and

cooperation.

The point of departure in analyzing the Murder King campaign

from the external output perspective should start with

presentation of the main channels of communication through which

PETA pursued its goal i.e. improvement of treatment of the

animals (living conditions and slaughter) by suppliers of the

Murder King’s restaurants. They achieved that by attracting media

attention, which was possible, inter alia, through: publicizing

the problem and receiving press coverage; production of leaflets,

posters; media lists; provocative advertisements, involvement of

celebrities; events-protest.

According to collected data “In 2001, when PETA initiated

the MurderKing campaign, fourteen articles [considering this

campaign] appeared in the press”(Griffiths and Steinbrecher 2010,

727). That is not a lot comparing to the following campaign KFC

Cruelty, when 45 articles were published. Furthermore, PETA

obliged itself to provide (for free) leaflets, posters, sample

9

news releases and media lists for vegan-activists who were

involved in the project (Yahoo Health Group). Moreover, the

activists were also encouraged to organize demonstrations at

their places of living or nearby Burger King Restaurants. An

overall effect was more than 800 “Murder King” protest rallies

which took place over five months (PETA 2007).

PETA also works with celebrities on high-profile campaigns

in order to highlight the issue of animals welfare by raising

public awareness and knowledge about the topic. The fight against

Burger King was exactly that kind of case: Alec Baldwin, James

Cromwell and Richard Pryor granted their endorsement to that

struggle. We assume that this celebrity endorsement had big

influence on grabbing the newspapers’ headlines and in general -

on effectiveness in spreading the message. It is worth mentioning

that now predominant role among communication means is played by

social media in the PETA‘s activity. However, at the time of

Murder King campaign they were not existing and therefore they

had not been used at all.

All of above-mentioned communication products; their

frequency of occurrence and compaction, can be used as a tool in

measuring external output of the whole campaign, giving the

answer about reasons of success of the campaign. Moreover, the

quantitative approach can tell us or at least indicates if the

message that organization wanted to disseminate via media was

sufficiently exposed in it to attract people‘s attention whose

then in turn can put pressure on the targeted company to change

10

the policy.

Considering communicative offer in “the Murder King”

campaign, now we focus on the analysis communication with the

most important stakeholder - the Burger King itself.

In January 2001 PETA sent two warning letters to the

restaurant chain. In the first one the Burger King was declared

as a next “target”, since the letter included also a brief

description of the previous campaign against McDonald’s (to make

the company aware what might have happened again). The second

letter expressly stated that the ‘‘Murder King’’ campaign was

ready to start, and it could expect a more rapid attack than

McDonald’s experienced. As we already know, Burger King responded

much quicker than McDonald’s did and the campaign concluded in

just six months (Griffiths and Steinbrecher 2010, 731).

However, the communication between PETA and Burger King has

it further continuation. In 2006, PETA went before Burger King's

board of directors during its company's annual corporate meeting

to request that poultry suppliers should switch to a more humane

method of slaughter called controlled atmosphere killing (CAK).

The restaurant chain responded in March 2007. This time it was

Burger King product safety manager - Steve Weiffenbach - who sent

PETA two letters, outlining the company’s new supply guidelines

(NBC NEWS).

As a result, it seems that Burger King definitely started to

favor suppliers that utilize CAK (rather than for instance

11

electric shock to knock birds unconscious before slaughter).

Therefore we can say that considering “epistoral” communication

with Burger King, People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals

turned out to be surprisingly effective and influential.

The next relevant stakeholder to whom PETA addressed the

issue of animal welfare are people in general and teen and young

adults in particular. Nowadays, these groups are targeted by

specially designed website www.peta2.com. This particular project

started in 2001 to attract people compelled by animals rights

issues and in 2005 around 200,000 people were considered to be

“active” members (Enright 2005, 13). The site also serves as the

source of recruitment to the group’s “street teams” (groups of

activists working in the field to generate publicity and rising

awareness among people). Unfortunately, due to lack of data, we

are not sure if the website was involved in the Murder King

campaign, although they started at the time - in 2001.

To sum up, it seems that PETA plays an increasing role in

the field of animal welfare as evidenced by successes achieved

against top fast-food chains, such as the Burger King. According

to some authors, tactics of improving animal‘s conditions can be

divided into “the gold standard approach and the incremental

improvement approach“ (Jones 2010, 3) The former one is based on

the rule – everything or nothing, whereas the latter one, to

which PETA leans, implies small steps toward the ideal and

desirable situation. Nevertheless, the success could not be

possible without winning the public opinion sentiment through

12

favorable media coverage, which – we think – PETA through the

Murder King campaign has effectively achieved.

OUTCOME LEVEL

The Impact on the Stakeholder

The true impact of the campaign on the stakeholders is

measured on the level of outcome. By the Institute for Public

Relations this level gets defined as:

“A long-term measure of the effectiveness of a particular

communications program or activity, by focusing on whether

targeted audience groups changed their opinions, attitudes and/or

behavior patterns as a result of having been exposed to and

become aware of messages directed at them” (The Institute

for Public Relations 2006, 25).

In the DPRG-model for communication controlling outcome gets

further divided into two measurement ranges: the direct outcome and

the indirect outcome. The former aims to measure the communicative

content or material which was offered to the stakeholders and how

they perceived it. It asks whether they used it and if it

increased their knowledge on this certain issue. The latter is

preconditioned by the “direct effects on stakeholder perception”

(Huhn et al. 2011, 14) and is concerned with the impact on

stakeholders' “opinions, attitudes, behavioral dispositions and

13

actual behavior” (ibid.).

It is important to measure the impact of communications

campaigns on stakeholders, because stakeholder-organization

relationships contribute to corporate success (Huhn et al. 2011,

8). A stakeholder is a person, group, or organization that has

interest or concern in a corporation or an organization. The

stakeholders we identified in the Murder King case are as

follows: Burger King, the meat and poultry industry, other

restaurant and food companies, Burger King customers, policy

makers, and PETA, its membership, as well as other animal rights

and welfare activists.

Stakeholder: Burger King

Obviously and as already mentioned, Burger King was the

target and subject of the campaign. It aimed for Burger King to

implement new guidelines for its meat and egg suppliers and also

for the performing of surprise inspections of its supplier's

slaughterhouses.

The campaign's direct outcome on Burger King were the new

guidelines Burger King implemented soon due to the campaign. As

requested by PETA Burger King agreed to:

● Unannounced inspections of its meat and poultry

slaughterhouses and to take actions if guidelines were not

fulfilled

● Setup animal-handling guidelines for the slaughterhouses

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of the suppliers and for the handling of “broiler” chickens

● Buy pork from farms that do not cage sows to metal stalls

● Implement slightly improved living circumstances for hens

concerning living-space and water-supply

● Stop purchasing from suppliers that starve hens in order to

force them to lay more eggs

● Apply humane handling procedures also for chicken at

slaughterhouses (PETA 2007)

It can be regarded as a recognition of their bad animal

welfare policies and shows Burger King's awareness towards the

topic. Burger King's 'cooperative' actions made PETA call off the

Murder King campaign.

The indirect outcome is shown through the adoption of new animal

welfare policies by Burger King in 2007. These policies were

developed as an effect of the Murder King campaign. The campaign

was followed by discussion between Burger King and PETA in order

to improve its animal welfare guidelines. This shows a clear

change of opinion in Burger King's behavior, as they seem to be

committed to animal welfare issues. PETA referred to this as “a

groundbreaking new plan, placing it at the forefront of the fast-

food industry with regard to animal welfare” (ibid.) .

Those new policies dictate

● to start buying from egg and pork suppliers that do not cage

their animals into crates and battery cages

● to also state that they from then on will favor egg

suppliers that do not use battery cages and poultry

15

suppliers that use or switch to the "controlled-atmosphere

killing"- method (ibid.)

Stakeholder: Meat and poultry industries

The procedures defined by Burger King to ensure that its

suppliers conform to agreed upon standards of animal welfare

directly affected the meat and poultry processing industries. The

implementation of the new procedures, listed above, had a ripple

effect; Burger King's immediate suppliers were affected

straightaway, but larger, institutional changes occurred as well.

It may be difficult to pin this lone campaign on the entire

industry shift, but it is conceivable that Murder King at least

indirectly had an effect on the changes. For example, shortly

after Burger King issued its new procedural guidelines, the

world's largest pork processor, Smithfield Foods, announced in

2003, a phasing out of confinement of pigs in metal crates over

the next ten years (Martin 2007). Jim Reeves, president of the

U.S. Beef Brands Council gives credit to PETA for the shift,

having stated that “groups such as People for the Ethical

Treatment of Animals have issued a wake-up call for the industry

and forced the issue of improving animal husbandry on producers"

(Morrison 2003).

Stakeholder: Restaurant and food companies

Indirectly, the shift in Burger King's policies and

practices has put pressure on other restaurant and food companies

16

to implement similar strategies and procedures. PETA has achieved

similar concessions from other major corporations, such as

McDonald's Corp. and Wendy's International, but Burger King alone

has received recognition from the animal rights group for its

“industry leading” approach (PETA 2007). As the third largest

largest fast food company in the world (Chancey 2012), Burger

King Corporation holds enormous influence within the industry.

Furthermore, social responsibility and social consciousness are

becoming increasingly marketable. PETA and similar organizations

advocate for corporate social responsibility, and more and more

consumers are demanding it as well. While Burger King’s initial

goals may be modest, food marketing experts and animal welfare

advocates suggest that the company's shift puts added pressure on

other restaurant and food companies to adopt similar practices

(Martin 2007).

Stakeholder: Customer

An outcome on the customer level could have been the

surcharge on the products resulting from the new guidelines for

suppliers. Unfortunately, we were not able to track that down as

Burger King actually stated that those changes would not affect

the prices (Martin 2007). However, it might have caused an

increase in price afterwards and in the long-term.

Our problem with measuring the outcome on the level of the

customer is the lack of data. But if we had it, we would measure

as a direct outcome the awareness and knowledge on this issue

17

resulting within the group of customer due to the campaign. As an

indirect outcome we would consider the behavioral change of the

customer. For a campaign like this it would probably be the

customer changing from a stakeholder into an active public. This

means that the customers do not just become aware of the issue

but also organize and act on the problem. For example boycott or

protest against Burger King until they agree to the aims of the

campaign (Tench and Yeomans 2009, 231).

Then there is also the level of where the campaign achieved

changes in Burger Kings behavior and which affected the

customer's choice and perception: Due to the campaign, Burger

King introduced the BK VEGGIE (Ruggless 2002). And further,

because of Burger King's commitment to animal welfare, the

consumers can feel good now by knowing the Whopper they are

eating comes from an animal who was raised “humanely”.

Stakeholder: Policy maker

The Murder King attack also directly affected policy makers.

As part of its agreement with PETA, Burger King petitioned the

U.S. Department of Agriculture to enforce the Humane Slaughter

Act (PETA 2007). In addition, PETA's crusade against Burger King

and other fast food chains in 2001 was followed swiftly by some

city and state governments in the United States taking measures

against restaurants serving animal products that were inhumanely

produced. Some municipal and state governments have since banned

restaurants from serving foie gras, and have prohibited farmers

18

from confining veal calves and pigs in crates (Martin 2007).

Stakeholder: PETA, its membership, and the animal welfare/rights

movement

With regards to any effect on membership this campaign may

have had for PETA, there is no specific evidence linking Murder

King to a jump in recruitment numbers. That said, PETA's victory

over Burger King likely helped raise the organization's steadily

increasing membership. Today PETA claims to have over three

million members worldwide, but does not offer any current

breakdown of membership by country. However, back in 2005 PETA

had 850,000 members in the US, up from 500,000 in 1995 (Enright

2005, 24).

As previously mentioned, in 2001 PETA also launched

www.peta2.com, a separate website designed to attract teens and

young adults compelled by animal rights issues. Although again

not directly linked to the Murder King campaign, the near

simultaneous launch of both the website and campaign – and the

campaign's victory – likely contributed to PETA2's quick success.

The site's focus on veganism and socially conscious behaviour

echoes the motives behind PETA's campaign against Burger King. In

2005, four years since its inception, PETA2 had 300,000 members

(PETA2 members are included in PETA's overall membership numbers)

(Enright 2005, 24).

Also of note, in 2001, PETA started buying stock and

acquiring shares in meat producers and fast food companies. As of

19

2011, PETA owns at least 80 shares in meat producers, clothing

retailers, fast food and grocery chains, and pharmaceutical

companies – including Smithfield Foods and Burger King (Artis

2011). PETA's obtainment of shares is a direct outcome of Murder

King, as shareholder tactics were used during the campaign. The

favourable result of the campaign likely influenced the

organization's continued use of this tactic.

The campaign, along with multiple “victories”, can also be

credited with aiding PETA's increased recognition. The Murder

King campaign, and others like it by PETA, ultimately benefit

animal rights and welfare activists in general, as such

communicative operations bring animal welfare/animal rights

dialogue into the mainstream.

OUTFLOW – VALUE CREATION “Value creation is the ultimate measure by which a company is judged.” (Value

creation 2009)

Communication is a process which requires specific

objectives about what the communication campaign is trying to

achieve. Establishing clear program objectives and desired

outcomes before you begin means provide a basis for measurement

of results (Guidelines and Standards for Measuring & Evaluating

PR Effectiveness 2000). PR goals should tie directly to the

overall goals of the business program. Only with clear objectives

in mind one can measure campaign’s outflow. Outflow or value

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creation during communication process includes measuring the

impact on strategic/financial targets (sales, agreements, cost

reduction...) and impact on tangible/intangible assets

(reputation capital, brand value, employee, performance and so

on) (Huhn et al. 2011).

Value creation can be defined as “...the performance of actions that

increase the worth of goods, services or even a business...” (Business dictionary),

but in case of PETA Murder King campaign the value created was of

a different nature.

Like most contemporary social movements, PETA is more

concerned with cultural changes such as identity issues than with

economic or political goals (PETA). Murder King campaign had non-

economic goals as well as political goals (which were addressed

indirectly). Their primary goal was to announce new guidelines for

Burger King’s meat and egg suppliers and therefore improve animal welfare in food

industry. The main method they used to realize the first objective

was negotiation with Burger King. Their communication goal was to

perform pressure on Burger King in order to reach their primary goal as quickly as

possible. Here they used several methods to awake wide interest and public

attention – they have already been described in previous chapters.

First goal, which turned out to be a political one enables us to

study campaign’s impact on strategic/financial targets. The

second communication objective enables us to measure impact on

tangible/intangible assets. Impact on strategic and/or financial targets

21

Financial targets are of no big importance to PETA, as they

state on their official website: “Like most contemporary social

movements, PETA is more concerned with cultural changes such as

identity issues than with economic or political goals.” PETA is a

nonprofit, tax-exempt corporation funded almost exclusively by

the contributions of it’s members. Therefore they did not have

any financial/profit objectives in mind when creating a campaign.

However – to run a communication campaign like Murder King a lot

of funds is needed. Since the data about financial outflow of

Murder King campaign is not available, we can only estimate how

much money did PETA spend on it. In year 2012 they invested

$787,681 in Cruelty-Free Merchandise Program. We estimate that

the number was slightly lower in 2001 due to the fact that there

were not as many donators in 2001 as in 2012. On the level of

financial outflow we should ask ourselves these questions:

■ How did the Murder King campaign success affect

donations (did they increase)?

■ Did PETA contribute more money to Cruelty-Free

Merchandise Program after the Murder King campaign

success?

■ How much was the unpaid publicity gained during

Murder King campaign worth?

Strategic targets :

PETA’s strategic objective was to implement new more humane

animal welfare policies and therefore improve animal welfare in

22

food industry. They approached the objective trough negotiations.

Successful value creation requires that negotiators both

advance individual needs via deal-making and manage the

underlying relationship, which happened in the case of PETA and

Burger King Corporation (BKC) negotiations – they reached a

compromise and it had a huge effect on BKC’s policy and U.S.

government policy as well. PETA action turned Burger King into an

activist for animal welfare – BKC (as a result of PETA Murder

King action and with PETA’s support) petitioned U.S. Department

of Agriculture (USDA) for enforcement of the Federal Humane

Slaughter Act, paving the way for stepped up enforcement of the

act. The Federal Humane Slaughter Act requires the USDA to

inspect slaughterhouses and ensure that standards relating to the

humane treatment of food animals are met. Improvements were made

on May 13, 2002, when President George W. Bush signed the Farm

Bill (Public Law 107-171) into law.

We can conclude that PETA Murder King campaign successfully

reached strategic objectives.

Impact on tangible and/or intangible assets

PETA’s activism is a long-term process in which campaigns

like Murder King only play a small role. Nevertheless Murder King

campaign followed the communication objective to perform pressure on

Burger King in order to reach their primary goal (increase animal welfare) as quickly as

possible. Not only that the Murder King campaign’s communication

objective succeeded in pushing forward the primary strategic

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objective, we estimate that it also affected intangible assets

such as reputational capital and brand value.

Murder King’s impact on reputational capital and

brand value has not been measured, since it was not the primary

goal of this campaign. Nevertheless we found it important to at

least point out some impact that the Murder King campaign

probably had on PETA’s reputation and brand value.

The reputational capital could be measured by membership

growth after campaign, number of new donators, positive media

coverage and so on. When PETA succeeded in forcing a change of

U.S. law (Federal Humane Slaughter Act) it gained a good amount

of credibility and reputational capital. It repositioned itself

as a strong pressure group.

“Strong brands enhance business performance primarily

through their influence stakeholder groups (current and

prospective). They create loyalty.”(Rocha 2012). Murder King

campaign confirmed that the “service” PETA provided (animal

rights activism) was efficient and therefore created positive

attitudes toward the brand (it addressed present and prospective

stakeholders). PETA could measure Murder King’s impact on brand

value through observing the number of new donators some time

after the campaign was called off or through observing the rise

in donations from existing donators at the time.

We must not forget that Murder King campaign did not only

have an impact on PETA reputation and brand value, but it also

affected Burger King’s intangible assets. Because PETA applauded

24

Burger King (PETA) after closing Murder King campaign and because

Burger King’s eagerness to improve animal welfare was widely

supported we can conclude that Murder King had a positive impact

on BKC as well.

CONCLUSIONS

Even though Murder King campaign used a lot of controversial

(that is - risky) means to achieve it’s main political and

ideological objective (to improve animal welfare) it had a

required effect: it drew attention to Burger King and created

pressure on the company (and government) to implement Federal

Humane Slaughter Act. The success could be attributed to

synchronized and well-run campaign on all levels: input, output,

outcome and outflow. Due to lack of data about finances used in

campaign and about membership/donations changes after Murder King

campaign a very certain analyze was not possible. Nevertheless we

made some important assumptions and conclusions but we also

raised some questions, which would help to measure campaigns

communication effect in the future.

25

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