Effective boycott campaigns

Viral Labeling by Tiberius Brastaviceanu (December 2009).

This page was created on Apr 22 2009 and was last updated on Dec 10 2011

Labeling of products

Go viral

The boycott can only be effective when it takes important proportions, which means that many products of the same company are labeled at multiple locations. This task is almost impossible for a single person, therefore you must convince other people to join your movement. You can create two types of collaborators: the ones that will only reproduce your labeling action, and the ones that will label, but will also try to convince others to join the movement. The second type are the multipliers, meaning that they will make your movement grow exponentially.

In order to reach other people willing to join you movement you will use the Internet. Moreover, to increase the number of your multipliers you need to make their tasks as easy as possible. We propose the following steps:

Media recording

To reach other people you need to create some type of media that will be distributed on the internet. You will need pictures or movies of the boycotted company, of the targeted products, and of their retailers/distributors. You can produce this material yourself, or you can gather it on the Internet. Try to find as much information as possible about the products and their vendors. It is also important to make a list of equivalent products, that you can later suggest as a substitution (see Suggesting alternatives for the boycotted products for the importance of a substitution).

Production of media

You want your action to be cloned as many times as possible by other people sensitive to the issues you are raising. For this purpose, you need to produce some media (a slide presentation or a video) and distribute it as widely as possible through the Internet. You need to package all the gathered information into a poignant and inciting message.

In the first place, you make a direct link between the company you are targeting and the social cause you are fighting for. You must explain your action of product labeling, and appeal to people to boycott this particular product (passive involvement), and even more importantly, to incite them to help the movement grow (active involvement). In order to lower barriers for the active involvement you need to setup a platform that others can use. Moreover, you need create the conditions for a cumulative effect, which will accelerate the process. Here's how you do this:

1. Create a blog or a small website where you expose the social issue, you list companies related to it, and you list their products and their distributors. Be location specific, make it easier for people to find these products, and make it a collaborative tool (such that other people can contribute with more information. Link to the Multitude site as we will be getting a lot of feedback and will continue to improve this technique.

2. Create a media template, and make it available for other people to produce their own media. Important sections of the template are:

   • Expose the social issue briefly. Include the opinion of important personalities, the appeal to authority is a powerful rhetoric.

   • Describe the company you are targeting and link it to the issue

   • Explain briefly this new boycotting technique (refer to the Multitude project!)

   • Leave some space for the product and its vendor

     • To show the labeled product

     • To show the vendor

     • To suggest alternative products

   • Incite people to reproduce the action

   • Refer to your blog/website for more information and for the template of the media

Use your own template for your media.

The media template must contain a reference to a unique repository of information on the Internet, your blog/website, where people can contribute with new information, hence benefiting from the cumulative effect. Only the product, the vendor and the location must change in the message from one participant to another. The rest should remain the same in order to make your action easily recognizable.

Using a unique media template is very important!

• A standardized way of delivering the message means unity. Your movement will be perceived as a strong one.

• A unique media template will also give you more visibility, which will improve the impact for your campaign.

• In order for your movement to grow exponentially to great proportions, you need to make sure that your message doesn't get diluted/distorted as it propagates form one multiplier to another. A unique template will ensure preservation during propagation.

• The media template makes active involvement easier, because most of the work in media production is already done. This increases the growth rate of your movement.

Technical note: the media template can be a short video containing all the sections proposed above, but missing the section about the product and the vendor (the sections in red). A marker can be included at the location where this section must be inserted by the other participants. Save the video in a widely used format. Almost anybody has access to Windows Movie Maker from Microsoft (for lack of a better suggestion). The movie can be cut at the location of the marker and the short missing section edited by the new participant can be easily inserted. On your blog/website give instructions on how to do it, and links to all needed tools.

Mass distribution of your media

You can use email and social networking sites to distribute your media. Contact your local classical media outlets, if they decide to talk about your action you will get more exposure, it never hearts.

You can combine other one-to-many communication techniques like Tweeter for example. The downside of micro-blogging is the minimal amount of information you can transmit. Your campaign can be more effective with a 3 to 5 minutes video or a 5 to 10 slide Power Point.

You can also create a blog or website where yo give more details about the cause and your action. Use free services like Blog.com or Google Sites for example. Set these tools is such a way to make their content spread efficiently: allow anybody to comment, syndicate them, etc. Use site metric tools such us Google Analytics to monitor the traffic on your site. It makes the game more fun.

Technical note: create a list of internet-based tools for content distribution (social networking sites, etc.), as well as a list of receptive classical media outlets. Make sure that people have easy access to guidance on how to perform the necessary tasks. Provide links or provide your own explanations if necessary.

Suggesting alternatives for the boycotted products

This helps your action by putting more economical pressure on the targeted company. They will not only loose market share due to direct loss of customers from your bad publicity campaign, but you are also making their competitors stronger by redirecting customers to them. These competitors will translate their gain in market share by acting in your favor.

Another reason for giving alternatives is to lower switching costs of consumers. Sometime we are not aware of another similar product, or where to find it. Even if we learn some negative aspects about a product, some of us don't go through the trouble of modifying our shopping behavior. Giving a suggestion makes it easier for consumers to abandon the targeted product.

Standard Labels

On your blog/website (see above) you can design a label and post it as a *.JPG file (a picture) to make it available for other participants. Use the format of a business card. These standard labels can be printed by others and used in their labeling actions. The advantage of having a standard label is to increase your visibility and therefore increase the effectiveness of your campaign. Include suggestions for equivalent products on your standard label.

An example that shows the dynamics of this method

More Information

• Read the Guide Boycott Organizers document from www.coopamerica.org

• See the Activist tools section from Rainforest Action Network