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WECU Pulls Ape Advertisements
July 29, 2010
Many of you wrote Whatcom Educational Credit Union (WECU) regarding their recent advertising campaign featuring a baby orangutan and a young chimpanzee promoting WECU’s home loans over other “monkey” businesses. These ads were featured in posters inside the banks as well as WECU’s website.
Because of the large amount of feedback that WECU received from you, our supporters, the bank has decided to pull the ad campaign. They have already removed their web ads and are in the process of getting replacement posters that do not feature photographs of entertainment apes.
This development would not have been accomplished without a growing public awareness of the inherent cruelty involved in using great apes for entertainment purposes. We want to thank you for your involvement in this movement – your efforts are essential in creating a voice for abused and exploited great apes.
We would like to thank WECU for their new and progressive stance on the use of apes in advertising. Although the images the bank used are stock photos and were not newly shot for this campaign, the harmful message still remains. You can help send a short email to the company in appreciation of their efforts to avoid chimpanzee exploitation.
Please send your thank you e-mails to:
Kessa Volland, Marketing Manager
kessa.volland@wecu.com
SampleThank You Letter/Email
Dear Ms. Volland:
I am writing to express my appreciation for WECU’s decision to pull the posters and web advertisements that featured great apes. Great apes do not belong in advertisements and shouldn’t be forced to perform for our entertainment. Even though these images were stock photos, the harmful message that great apes are funny and cute still remains. I was so happy to hear that WECU chose to use responsible advertising and hope they never use nonhuman primates in advertising campaigns again! I hope other companies will follow your example.
Sincerely,
[Your name here]
[Your city & state]
**If you write an e-mail, please BCC PrimatePatrol@ChimpSanctuaryNW.org for tracking purposes.