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Protest against Israeli food products sold in Sainsbury's supermarket.
A protest against Israeli food products sold in Sainsbury’s supermarket. Photograph: Guy Corbishley/Alamy
A protest against Israeli food products sold in Sainsbury’s supermarket. Photograph: Guy Corbishley/Alamy

Do we still need boycotts when you can send an angry tweet?

This article is more than 8 years old

Ten years ago, people could join a boycott and send an angry letter to a company, now they could just take to social media with an angry or ironic hashtag

Four years after political reforms saw campaigners lift calls to boycott companies operating in Burma, a new ranking of the largest 100 Burmese firms shows a gradual move towards greater transparency, human rights protections and anti-corruption measures.

Although the ranking isn’t independently verified, it’s eye-catching for one particular reason: of the top ten performers, half found themselves on either EU or US sanctions lists prior to the end of military rule in 2011.

“This seems to suggest that those companies which faced sanctions or were accused of a bad record try extra hard to get it right and to become more transparent”, says Salil Tripathi, senior adviser at the London-based Institute for Human Rights and Business (IHRB).

The report comes at a time when questions are being asked about the effectiveness of boycotts. An iconic feature of anti-corporate activism for the last 40 years, global consumer action against the likes of The Gap over allegations of sweatshop labour, or Nestlé over powdered baby milk appears to be less frequent these days.

The alternative oscillates between uncoordinated social media outrage on the one hand (the infamous Twitter storm), and efforts at constructive engagement by civil society groups such as WWF on the other. Earlier this month, US presidential hopeful Hilary Clinton went as far as to describe a Palestinian-led boycott of Israel as “counter-productive”.

Activist groups are quick to come to the defence of boycotting as a powerful instrument for change. Done well, they can hit companies’ sales and damage their brand reputation, says Patti Lynn, managing director of the US-based campaign group Corporate Accountability International (CAI).

“Boycotts are an incredibly effective tool because they recognise the reality that money is often the greatest motivator for corporations. Put simply, when organised well, boycotts change the cost-benefit analysis, making the status quo too costly to continue”, she says.

CAI’s track record includes a boycott in the 1980s against General Electric, which subsequently disinvested from nuclear weapon production. The legacy of boycotts in Burma is similar. Groups such as the Burma Campaign UK and the US Campaign for Burma forced over 100 brands to pull out after the failed democratic elections of 1990. The list includes FTSE and Fortune firms such as Pepsi, PwC, British American Tobacco, Rolls Royce and Premier Oil.

Greenpeace loses faith

Few campaign groups are more associated with boycotts than UK environment group Greenpeace, which famously campaigned to stop Shell dumping the Brent Spar oil rig back in 1995. Even so, Greenpeace programme director Robin Oakley admits that there exists a “slightly exaggerated faith” in the effectiveness of boycotts.

To stand a chance of success, boycotts have to be targeted, he says. It’s always going to be an “uphill struggle” to boycott the USA, say, or China. “Boycotts are most effective when targeting one clearly identifiable product, ideally one which is never a necessity, and where alternatives are easily available”, states Oakley.

Boycotts also need to hit companies where it hurts; namely, their balance sheet. Take the Spanish bank Santander, which was accused earlier this year of financing deforestation in Indonesia. Some of Greenpeace’s UK supporters subsequently moved their accounts, causing Santander to comply “very, very quickly”, according to Oakley.

Anna Roberts, executive director at Burma Campaign UK strikes a similarly qualified note in support of boycotts, admitting that they are “just one tool among many”. Boycotts are always hamstrung by the size and scope of support they attract. As IHRB’s Tripathi points out, “if only a few university campuses and a few groups do it [a boycott], it won’t make a material difference.”

The problem of non-consumer facing brands is a very real one for boycotters too. The Nikes, Coca-Colas and P&Gs of this world are super-sensitive to any attacks on their public image. Yet for the foreign pipeline manufacturer operating in Iran, what is there for consumers to boycott? In such cases, pressure from governments, investors and business partners is what packs a punch.

Lastly, human rights groups argue that boycotts can carry unintended consequences. Consumers listen to their moral conscience when opting not to buy a particular product or service. So what happens when a boycott causes a business to go bust and its laid-off employees become subject to even worse labour abuses? The closure of Pakistan football-stitching industry in the late 1990s provides a salutary case in point.

Engagement tactics

A popular alternative strategy to boycotting is so-called “engagement”. Rather than threaten companies with consumer-led sanctions, campaign groups seek to negotiate directly. The spate of roundtables promoted by WWF on everything from sustainable palm oil and forestry to beef and sugar [pdf] is illustrative of such a trend.

While the CAI’s Lynn is sceptical about companies using this “partnership paradigm” with NGOs to make real change, she accepts that “principled engagement” can be effective. An archetypal example is Greenpeace’s third-party monitoring of Nestlé’s efforts to monitor its palm oil suppliers.

It may be that the day of mass boycotts are done. That’s the hunch of Paul Caulfield, an MBA programme director at Nottingham University Business School. Ten years ago, people would join a boycott group and send angry letter, he says. “Now they send an angry or ironic Tweet.”

“Boycotts are effective, but they don’t have to happen now”, he adds. “Thanks to social media, the fear of a bad hashtag means that damage is done before a boycott actually has to happen.”

Not everyone is on Twitter, though. In Burma, despite alleged improvements, 39 of the top 100 companies don’t even have websites. In such countries, old-style boycotts still carry weight.

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