Salon Money | Hip! Hip! Hooray! Anyone remember who we're boycotting today?

T A B L E__T A L K
Are big banks inherently evil? Why or why not? Deposit your 2 cents in the Business and Personal Finance area of Table Talk

R E C E N T L Y

The economy of fake fat
By Heather Chaplin
Olestra: the oil that leaves you running for the bathroom
(07/31/98)
Farmers of the American Dream
By Carol Lloyd
Financial infomercials promise "free money," but what they're really selling is their faith in your "potential"
(07/24/98)
Glutton for luxury
By Heather Chaplin
One woman's necessity is another woman's excess
(07/17/98)
Our watches, our selves
By Robert Bryce
As the economy keeps on ticking, the watch industry sells the daze of our lives
(07/10/98)
Pot of gold or P.C. money pit?
By Heather Chaplin
Are socially responsibility mutual funds good karma or bad business?
(07/03/98)
- - - - - - - - - - - - - - - -
Browse the
Money feature archives

HIP! HIP! HOORAY! ANYONE REMEMBER WHO WE'RE BOYCOTTING TODAY? | PAGE 1, 2
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They found their most powerful weapon lay in the power of the media to galvanize support well beyond the local boycotts of the early 20th century. So keen is this pressure that companies often knuckle under even when there's no evidence that ostracism has done them economic harm. A week after the Southern Baptists called a boycott on Disney, the company pulled from record stores 100,000 copies of Insane Clown Posse's controversial album "The Great Milenko." Yet Disney didn't change the "gay-friendly policies" at the heart of the boycott, and its revenues, profits and stock have all continued to rise. Nike's sales did drop during a highly publicized boycott over its treatment of women workers in Indonesia and Thailand, but Wall Street analysts agree the hurt came from the Asian economic crisis, not the U.S. boycott. But when CEO Philip Knight changed his overseas hiring policies, he told the press he was tired of being seen as "the perfect corporate villain for these times."
"I don't know if a lot of teenagers stopped buying Nike shoes, but the public image of Nike sure was tarnished," says Gar Smith, editor of the Earth Island Journal. "Boycotts work on public pressure and moral humiliation. It's the rare boycott that succeeds on economic ground."
Environmental groups like the Earth Island Institute and the Rainforest Action Network are among the most adept at playing the media card. When the Rainforest Action Network targeted Mitsubishi for cutting old-growth trees, it hit hardest the affiliates exposed to the U.S. market: Mitsubishi Motors and Mitsubishi Electronics. RAN activists chained themselves to Mitsubishi cars at auto shows, protested on the showroom floors of Mitsubishi retailers the Good Guys and Nobody Beats the Wiz and shut off Mitsubishi recruiters from 48 campuses, including Harvard and Stanford. "Basically, we were cutting off their future," said RAN communications chief Mark Westlund. "That gets them where it hurts." Again, Mitsubishi said "it's hard to document" how much business it lost, but the two affiliates ducked out of the boycott by agreeing to use paper and wood that didn't come from rain forests.
But as activist groups grow more innovative and effective in their tactics, the consumer continues to be pushed to the sidelines. There are several reasons for this. Companies don't necessarily respond to consumer pressure because they aren't sure how harmful it will be. The threat of lost business can never be estimated with any accuracy: A boycotted company will never know how many letter-writers will follow through on their threat to boycott, or how many who didn't write are cutting business ties forever. Consumers also often end up in the dark: Boycotts make a much bigger media splash when they're called than when they're called off (many consumers continued to boycott Burger King and table grapes years after the boycotts ended). Some boycotts are bogus (some Snapple customers honored a boycott protesting the company's nonexistent ties to the Ku Klux Klan). And few find out when boycotts are resumed (as happened with Nestlé and table grapes in recent years).
The hardest part is keeping up with the latest boycott news, a dilemma made tougher by the lack of a single, publicized source for calls to action. A handful of incomplete lists are on the Web, such as The Boycott Board and Boycott News. They're often short-lived, shutting down after companies send their attorneys to quell publicity. Todd Putnam, who runs the grass-roots Institute for Consumer Responsibility in Seattle, used to publish the National Boycott News to 5,000 subscribers. When Putnam called International Research & Development Corp. (now bankrupt) of Mattawan, Mich., to get its side of a boycott by animal rights groups, the company responded by threatening to sue if Putnam printed one word about the boycott. "We published anyway, but it turned out to be our last issue because we ran out of money," he said.
Ironically, what Putnam found before he ceased publishing in 1994 was that not only had the number of boycotts he tracked risen from 30 to 300 a year, their durations were shrinking from seven to 10 years to two to three years on average. They were becoming more effective at the same time that they were becoming harder for consumers to keep up with. It was almost as if the boycotts were more effective without the public's active participation.
Most groups lament the consumer's increasingly passive role and would like to see more consumer action. "As long as you're in a position to buy or not buy a product, you have the power to choose, as you do in a voting booth," said Smith. "But you're going to be invisible these days unless you also let the company know you're boycotting them."
SALON | Aug. 7, 1998
Kevin Kelleher is a freelance writer in San Francisco.




T A B L E__T A L K Are big banks inherently evil? Why or why not? Deposit your 2 cents in the Business and Personal Finance area of Table Talk R E C E N T L Y The economy of fake fat By Heather Chaplin Olestra: the oil that leaves you running for the bathroom (07/31/98) Farmers of the American Dream By Carol Lloyd Financial infomercials promise "free money," but what they're really selling is their faith in your "potential" (07/24/98) Glutton for luxury By Heather Chaplin One woman's necessity is another woman's excess (07/17/98) Our watches, our selves By Robert Bryce As the economy keeps on ticking, the watch industry sells the daze of our lives (07/10/98) Pot of gold or P.C. money pit? By Heather Chaplin Are socially responsibility mutual funds good karma or bad business? (07/03/98) - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - Browse the Money feature archives		HIP! HIP! HOORAY! ANYONE REMEMBER WHO WE'RE BOYCOTTING TODAY? \| PAGE 1, 2 - - - - - - - - - - They found their most powerful weapon lay in the power of the media to galvanize support well beyond the local boycotts of the early 20th century. So keen is this pressure that companies often knuckle under even when there's no evidence that ostracism has done them economic harm. A week after the Southern Baptists called a boycott on Disney, the company pulled from record stores 100,000 copies of Insane Clown Posse's controversial album "The Great Milenko." Yet Disney didn't change the "gay-friendly policies" at the heart of the boycott, and its revenues, profits and stock have all continued to rise. Nike's sales did drop during a highly publicized boycott over its treatment of women workers in Indonesia and Thailand, but Wall Street analysts agree the hurt came from the Asian economic crisis, not the U.S. boycott. But when CEO Philip Knight changed his overseas hiring policies, he told the press he was tired of being seen as "the perfect corporate villain for these times." "I don't know if a lot of teenagers stopped buying Nike shoes, but the public image of Nike sure was tarnished," says Gar Smith, editor of the Earth Island Journal. "Boycotts work on public pressure and moral humiliation. It's the rare boycott that succeeds on economic ground." Environmental groups like the Earth Island Institute and the Rainforest Action Network are among the most adept at playing the media card. When the Rainforest Action Network targeted Mitsubishi for cutting old-growth trees, it hit hardest the affiliates exposed to the U.S. market: Mitsubishi Motors and Mitsubishi Electronics. RAN activists chained themselves to Mitsubishi cars at auto shows, protested on the showroom floors of Mitsubishi retailers the Good Guys and Nobody Beats the Wiz and shut off Mitsubishi recruiters from 48 campuses, including Harvard and Stanford. "Basically, we were cutting off their future," said RAN communications chief Mark Westlund. "That gets them where it hurts." Again, Mitsubishi said "it's hard to document" how much business it lost, but the two affiliates ducked out of the boycott by agreeing to use paper and wood that didn't come from rain forests. But as activist groups grow more innovative and effective in their tactics, the consumer continues to be pushed to the sidelines. There are several reasons for this. Companies don't necessarily respond to consumer pressure because they aren't sure how harmful it will be. The threat of lost business can never be estimated with any accuracy: A boycotted company will never know how many letter-writers will follow through on their threat to boycott, or how many who didn't write are cutting business ties forever. Consumers also often end up in the dark: Boycotts make a much bigger media splash when they're called than when they're called off (many consumers continued to boycott Burger King and table grapes years after the boycotts ended). Some boycotts are bogus (some Snapple customers honored a boycott protesting the company's nonexistent ties to the Ku Klux Klan). And few find out when boycotts are resumed (as happened with Nestlé and table grapes in recent years). The hardest part is keeping up with the latest boycott news, a dilemma made tougher by the lack of a single, publicized source for calls to action. A handful of incomplete lists are on the Web, such as The Boycott Board and Boycott News. They're often short-lived, shutting down after companies send their attorneys to quell publicity. Todd Putnam, who runs the grass-roots Institute for Consumer Responsibility in Seattle, used to publish the National Boycott News to 5,000 subscribers. When Putnam called International Research & Development Corp. (now bankrupt) of Mattawan, Mich., to get its side of a boycott by animal rights groups, the company responded by threatening to sue if Putnam printed one word about the boycott. "We published anyway, but it turned out to be our last issue because we ran out of money," he said. Ironically, what Putnam found before he ceased publishing in 1994 was that not only had the number of boycotts he tracked risen from 30 to 300 a year, their durations were shrinking from seven to 10 years to two to three years on average. They were becoming more effective at the same time that they were becoming harder for consumers to keep up with. It was almost as if the boycotts were more effective without the public's active participation. Most groups lament the consumer's increasingly passive role and would like to see more consumer action. "As long as you're in a position to buy or not buy a product, you have the power to choose, as you do in a voting booth," said Smith. "But you're going to be invisible these days unless you also let the company know you're boycotting them." SALON \| Aug. 7, 1998 Kevin Kelleher is a freelance writer in San Francisco.