In Summer 2015, I worked with Funny Or Die, Moby, the Merkin Bros and legendary social activist pranksters The Yes Men to write, produce, and perform an elaborate prank campaign about the negative impact of beef production on the California drought. We invented a fake non-profit organization called "Skip Showers for Beef", run by fictional Northern California ranchers who wanted to convince eco-conscious Californians to eat as much beef as they wanted, as long as they took an equal number of showers to equalize the environmental footprint. No big deal, it's only 26 showers for a hamburger! And 105 showers for a steak! When you break it down, the numbers are insane. So we doubled down on making the insanity feel as real as possible, aiming to present our message in grounded and reasonable formats that might - just might - fool people into thinking they should get their stink on for steak.
The campaign was enormous, including a website we built from scratch, an earnest PSA from Moby, a high production value informational video, street canvassing teams, social media teams, fake press releases, and a plethora of detailed print materials. We even got a little too punk for our own good and stole the mic onstage at a press event, making a statement about how everyone should skip showers for beef right before Governor Brown spoke about the drought. The Guardian commissioned a mini-documentary video about the whole crazy experience.
In the end, I don't think anyone ever skipped an actual shower for beef, but we certainly made an impact online and gave the world a weird new metric for measuring beef consumption. You're welcome!
