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 Given the right product, cause and audience, boycotts can be a powerful tool for change. Iain Clacher reports.
When food manufacturer Heinz last month broadcasted a TV commercial in the UK showing two men kissing, to some they might as well have adopted the slogan: ‘Heinz Meanz Queenz’.
Within days, an organised campaign of complaints prompted Heinz to drop the ad which stirred British gay rights group, Stonewall, to launch a boycott of the company.
It comes before a similar move across the Atlantic when the American Family Association (AFA) instigated a boycott of McDonald’s over the fast food giant’s membership of the Gay and Lesbian Chamber of Commerce earlier this month.
The AFA, which purports an influence over millions of consumers, had already claimed some credit for Ford’s decision to withdraw its ads from the gay press in 2005.
This time, however, McDonald’s shows no sign of succumbing to the AFA’s threats.
“We stand by and support our people to live and work in a society free of discrimination and harassment,” McDonald’s spokesperson Bill Whitman told The Washington Post.
So how effective are boycotts in influencing the policies of corporations and governments?
Australian-born gay rights activist Peter Tatchell told SX that boycotts, though rarely used, had sometimes worked to the gay community’s advantage.
Tatchell’s direct action group, Outrage!, organised a boycott of Romanian wines in protest at the country’s anti-gay laws in the mid 90s.
“The Romanian Government and wine industry got panicky,” Tatchell said. “As a compliment to other lobbying [efforts], the boycott campaign probably helped to persuade the government to ditch its homophobic legislation.”
Tatchell also recalls that in the early ’80s, disco diva Donna Summer was so stung by a gay boycott of her concerts and records she distanced herself from her alleged comments about HIV/AIDS being “God’s punishment”.
And then there was Florida Orange Juice.
“One of the earliest and most high profile gay boycott efforts was in the 1970s against Florida Orange Juice, a company that used arch homophobe Anita Bryant to promote its product,” Tatchell recalls.
“As well as hitting Florida Orange Juice hard, the boycott sent a powerful deterrent message to other businesses: don’t discriminate or promote homophobia, otherwise you will suffer financially.”
Companies such as Cascade, Boags and Cadbury’s learned a similar lesson in Australia in 1994 when a Sydney man, Peter Urmson, launched the ‘Buy Right’ boycott of Tasmanian-made products to protest the state’s refusal to decriminalise gay sex.
The boycott led to a reported revenue fall of up to 55 per cent amongst the targeted companies, and stung them into throwing their weight behind law reform.
“While that boycott didn’t in and of itself lead to law reform, it did help create a more conducive environment,” Tasmanian activist Rodney Croome told SX.
By comparison, more recent calls for a boycott of Gloria Jean’s Coffees over its links to alleged ex-gay programs appear not to have taken off.
“Importantly, in the Tasmanian case there was high profile branding of Tasmanian products and an awareness of the law reform issue that went far beyond the gay community,” Croome adds.
“Boycotts work when there’s a clear brand to target, a clear abuse to protest, and that abuse has a high enough profile to ensure the boycott has wide-spread support,” he said.
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Peer pressure
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