Ria Rehberg of Veganuary on driving institutional change through online campaigns

The Sentience Institute Podcast

I see the pledge program a lot as a means to an end to get institutional change to happen… We're spending about 40% of our staff time and resources on corporate engagement and institutional change. While the marketing side of things is also there to sort of make the corporate side happen… [Veganuary’s place in the movement is] using the idea of the pledge program and driving a corporate change with it.
- Ria Rehberg

Veganuary focuses primarily on its online vegan pledge program. But how can this online commitment be harnessed to encourage wider societal change? Can this strategy play a role in bringing change in neglected areas and underrepresented demographics?

Ria Rehberg became executive director of Veganuary in 2019, having previously worked in leadership roles for Animal Equality and the Million Dollar Vegan campaign.

Topics discussed in the episode:

• How Veganuary’s pledge program fits into the wider movement to drive behavior change (1:54)
• The numbers and research behind Veganuary’s claims to have caused a reduction of more than 1.2 million kilograms of animal products purchased between January and June 2019 (7:15)
• Variations in marketing that affect the cost-effectiveness of Veganuary’s online pledge program (15:05)
• How Veganuary encourages companies to improve their provision of animal-free foods and decrease their provision of conventional animal products (16:36)
• How Veganuary works with other animal advocacy organizations (24:39)
• The extent to which nonprofits should specialize in a single intervention and how Veganuary’s pledge program relates to their corporate outreach work (28:24)
• Whether the farmed animal movement should prioritize tactics focused on influencing institutions or individuals (31:13)
• Whether the farmed animal movement should emphasize reducetarianism or veganism (36:42)
• The importance of marketing experience for Veganuary’s employees (40:59)
• Marketing experience, the relative use of for-profit and nonprofit career experience, and how to develop expertise without experience (42:10)
• Developing leadership skills (45:53)
• Funding constraints and how these issues compare to other bottlenecks on Veganuary’s impact (1:01:18)
• Veganuary’s work outside the UK, prioritizing between different locations to expand into, and the challenges of its expansion into different countries (1:19:52)
• Short-term cost-efficiency vs. diversity in outreach and social marketing (1:38:26)

Resources discussed in the episode:

Resources by or about Veganuary:

• Veganuary’s impact assessment for the 2019 pledge program
• Market research suggesting 10 times as many people taking part in Veganuary as signing up through the website
• Kantar research conducted with Veganuary (forthcoming)
• Veganuary’s business toolkit (available upon request)
• “#Veganuary: UK overtakes Germany as world’s leader for vegan food launches”
• Vegan Cycle India

SI’s resources:

• Foundational questions summaries
• Lessons for Consumer Behavior Interventions from the Health Behavior Interventions Literature (forthcoming)

Other resources:

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