This is a commendably extensive response which addresses many of the concerns and complaints made. Few other organisations would do this and all credit to you for doing so and engaging in this way. But satisfactory? No.
You built quite an edifice on a web of research and your dazzlingly elaborate theory of change. If everything went right, you would certainly have achieved your proximate goals. Problem is that rarely in the world of public engagement, media and comms does everything go right.
That can, of course, be mitigated a bit by very careful planning, organisation and execution and the more complex and chancy a project is, the more important it is to do that right. By your own admission (and ample external evidence, including taking down the flagship website within days of the campaign launch) you didn’t do that. And here’s the rub—you weren’t just gambling on your own success, you were gambling with the work and success of others. In my view, you should not have done it at all for that reason. But if you’re going to go ahead, be VERY sure you’re doing it right. You weren’t and there was a failure of professionalism there that goes beyond “we should have checked someone else’s emails”.
There is much more to say on the big picture and I’ve said some of it on my LinkedIn if people should be curious. (Summary: this campaign was ill-conceived, divisive, disrespectful, callow, unjustified by its expected outcomes, poorly executed and exemplifies the limitations of the EA approach.) In this post, I just want to flag that those of us privileged to be paid to work for animals in any capacity must never neglect the foundation of professionalism. We’ve got to do our jobs right. I put my hand up to many mistakes over my career and again commend Thom and Aidan for their transparency. Obviously, I’m no fan of the entire project on principle so people can judge my comment on this accordingly, but I don’t think this post yet shows a deep enough engagement with the substantive criticisms that have been made or with the reasons things didn’t go according to plan.
This is a commendably extensive response which addresses many of the concerns and complaints made. Few other organisations would do this and all credit to you for doing so and engaging in this way. But satisfactory? No.
You built quite an edifice on a web of research and your dazzlingly elaborate theory of change. If everything went right, you would certainly have achieved your proximate goals. Problem is that rarely in the world of public engagement, media and comms does everything go right.
That can, of course, be mitigated a bit by very careful planning, organisation and execution and the more complex and chancy a project is, the more important it is to do that right. By your own admission (and ample external evidence, including taking down the flagship website within days of the campaign launch) you didn’t do that. And here’s the rub—you weren’t just gambling on your own success, you were gambling with the work and success of others. In my view, you should not have done it at all for that reason. But if you’re going to go ahead, be VERY sure you’re doing it right. You weren’t and there was a failure of professionalism there that goes beyond “we should have checked someone else’s emails”.
There is much more to say on the big picture and I’ve said some of it on my LinkedIn if people should be curious. (Summary: this campaign was ill-conceived, divisive, disrespectful, callow, unjustified by its expected outcomes, poorly executed and exemplifies the limitations of the EA approach.) In this post, I just want to flag that those of us privileged to be paid to work for animals in any capacity must never neglect the foundation of professionalism. We’ve got to do our jobs right. I put my hand up to many mistakes over my career and again commend Thom and Aidan for their transparency. Obviously, I’m no fan of the entire project on principle so people can judge my comment on this accordingly, but I don’t think this post yet shows a deep enough engagement with the substantive criticisms that have been made or with the reasons things didn’t go according to plan.