Bryant Symons Technologies (United Kingdom)

We present a field experiment to evaluate a social marketing campaign encouraging people to try plant-based milk. We ran six anti-dairy billboards for one month in a city in the UK. The billboards featured a photo of a suffering dairy cow, a link to a website with information about dairy cow suffering, and an appeal to try plant-based milk. To estimate the impact of the billboards on plant-based and dairy milk consumption, we triangulated three novel data collection methods. First, we compared changes in regional vs. nationwide sales data from two plant-based milk companies. Second, we evaluated the proportion of dairy-free orders from six cafes in the city where we ran the billboards (‘Billboard City’) before, during, and after the campaign. Third, we compared changes in the proportion of household waste representing plant-based or dairy milk in the Billboard City vs. another UK city with no intervention (‘Control City’). Although descriptively, our results appear to be in line with some positive impact of the billboards, ultimately the study design and data were too limited to support a general claim about the impact of the billboard campaign. There were logistical challenges with each data source, as well as too many extraneous factors for the design to account for adequately. We discuss the challenges of field research, the strengths and weaknesses of each novel data collection method, and present considerations for future research.

We used the Mercy For Animals social media outreach budget to systematically estimate the efficacy of different advertisements on different demographic groups. Based on the click-through rates (CTR: the percentage of impressions resulting in clicks on ads), we observe:1. Animal-based advertisements are more than twice as effective as other types of advertisement, achieving a CTR over 3% compared to just 1.1-1.5% for environment, health, and social adverts.2. Females and older users were more likely to click adverts compared to males and younger users, respectively.3. Specific messages may outperform others within these broad themes. We find that pigs were the most effective animal advert (vs. cows, chickens, and fish), climate change was the most effective environment advert (vs. land use, water use, and deforestation), and chronic disease was the most effective health message (vs. obesity, pathogen contamination, and antibiotic contamination).The findings can be used to inform social media strategy for Mercy For Animals and the broader animal protection movement.

The authors describe an experimental study of single-point diamond-machining techniques with a view to producing a low-cost production machine for the manufacture of infrared optical components such as aluminium mirrors, germanium lenses and zinc sulphide domes. These components may be machined to a high form accuracy and surface finish such that they require no subsequent polishing. Of the three possible machine configurations, X-Y, R- theta and spherical generation, the last two are considered the most efficient and cost effective for the present requirement. They have been extended to produce aspheric components with departures up to +or-2 mm from a best-fit sphere.