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How Boycotts Work (Or Do They?) · Stuff You Should Know

0:01
Speaker 1: Welcome to Stuff you should know, a production of iHeartRadio.
0:11
Speaker 2: Hey, and welcome to the podcast. I'm Josh and there's
0:13
Speaker 2: Chuck and it's just the two of us, and we
0:16
Speaker 2: are doing an episode on boycotts today because boy boycott's
0:21
Speaker 2: really sticking your crawl. Did a lot of them. They
0:25
Speaker 2: seem to be overused in this era, and I wanted
0:29
Speaker 2: to see how the whole thing worked, just from watching
0:31
Speaker 2: them happen over and over again.
0:34
Speaker 1: Yeah. Well, you know Webster's defines a boycott as a
0:37
Speaker 1: collective active refusal. Yeah, so does Steve, who help us
0:42
Speaker 1: with this. But you know what we're talking about, right,
0:45
Speaker 1: that's when people get together these days. Usually it's a
0:48
Speaker 1: call on social media or something, and they say, hey,
0:50
Speaker 1: we're not going to buy this thing from your store,
0:53
Speaker 1: or we're not gonna buy anything from your store, or
0:54
Speaker 1: we're not gonna buy anything from your company, or we're
0:56
Speaker 1: not going to buy anything from your state or country
1:00
Speaker 1: because we want to hit your bottom line, hitch in
1:03
Speaker 1: the wallet.
1:03
Speaker 2: As they say, to get you to change.
1:06
Speaker 1: Yeah, I mean to get you to change, or I think,
1:09
Speaker 1: in some people's cases these days, just to be mean
1:11
Speaker 1: because I hate what you stand for.
1:14
Speaker 2: Yeah, so I want to say I'm not poop pooing
1:16
Speaker 2: the entire concept of boycotts. What what I was taking
1:20
Speaker 2: issue with is just how fast and loose they come,
1:25
Speaker 2: over and over that if you really followed every boycott
1:27
Speaker 2: like you had starve to death, there'd be nowhere you
1:29
Speaker 2: could buy food any longer, let alone anything else.
1:32
Speaker 1: Well, yeah, and can I quickly say also that these
1:36
Speaker 1: sort of so many calls for these boycotts and social media,
1:39
Speaker 1: they're also I feel like a lot of times like
1:42
Speaker 1: just not thought out and that like you're boycotting this
1:44
Speaker 1: one thing, but the same company owns this other thing
1:47
Speaker 1: that you like, and they just seem to be kind
1:50
Speaker 1: of the dumb version of boycotts.
1:52
Speaker 2: Yeah, they're very knee jerk, they're not very organized, and
1:55
Speaker 2: they're just emotionally driven. All boycotts have some level of
1:59
Speaker 2: emotion and to them driving them, But there's also supposed
2:04
Speaker 2: to be a lot more to them if you're gonna
2:05
Speaker 2: make it successful.
2:07
Speaker 1: Yeah, and we're gonna cover all that stuff.
2:09
Speaker 2: But also one more thing, Chuck, I am also not
2:12
Speaker 2: poopooing anybody caring about something that's great. I will always
2:16
Speaker 2: promote somebody caring about something that's important to you, and
2:19
Speaker 2: a lot of people show that they care by joining
2:21
Speaker 2: in on boycotts or maybe even starting boycotts.
2:24
Speaker 1: Yeah. I mean you're known as the guy who cares.
2:27
Speaker 2: Who's been calling me that the public at large.
2:29
Speaker 1: I think that's your nickname on Reddit, the.
2:31
Speaker 2: Boy who cares and the best all around boy.
2:34
Speaker 1: Oh man, look at that match made and heaven.
2:36
Speaker 2: The barb, the BHC and the barb.
2:40
Speaker 1: I love it.
2:41
Speaker 2: So let's start talking about boycotts because, like I said,
2:44
Speaker 2: I was curious in how they worked. We havesked David
2:46
Speaker 2: help us with them. And what I didn't know right
2:49
Speaker 2: out of the gate is that Boycott is somebody's last name.
2:52
Speaker 2: The first guy whoever on record, got boycotted was named
2:57
Speaker 2: Charles Cunningham Boycott.
2:59
Speaker 1: Yeah. That seems like something we would make up as
3:01
Speaker 1: a bit, yeah, but it's actually totally true. He was
3:05
Speaker 1: an Englishman living in Ireland and County Mayo, and he
3:09
Speaker 1: was a rent collector, specifically would collect rent for absentee
3:13
Speaker 1: British landlords from Irish tenant farmers who were having a
3:18
Speaker 1: very rough time in eighteen seventy nine, down on.
3:21
Speaker 2: Their luck, as you'd put it. There was a terrible famine.
3:24
Speaker 2: This is after the Great Irish Potato famine, but this
3:27
Speaker 2: one wasn't so wonderful either, And so these farmers were
3:30
Speaker 2: not exactly looking forward to being evicted for being behind
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Speaker 2: on rent. And Boycott apparently seems to be one of
3:38
Speaker 2: those people who had like he just followed the rules.
3:41
Speaker 2: You're the one who's not paying your rent, so get out.
3:44
Speaker 2: And the Irish people in County Mayo decided to do
3:47
Speaker 2: something about it. They formed an organization called the Land League,
3:51
Speaker 2: and they were agitating for fair rents. They were agitating
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Speaker 2: for an end to evictions, and Charles Boycott just kept
3:58
Speaker 2: evicting people. So they're like, we've got to try something else.
4:00
Speaker 2: What can we do. Let's do everything we can to
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Speaker 2: ruin Charles Boycott's life.
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Speaker 1: Yeah, and if there was only a name for this kind.
4:08
Speaker 2: Of action, they're like, we'll get to that later, yeah.
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Speaker 1: But we can't think of one. So later, in a
4:14
Speaker 1: letter to the Times of London, Boycott basically kind of
4:17
Speaker 1: summarize what they had been doing. And we're not going
4:21
Speaker 1: to read all this word for word, but you know,
4:23
Speaker 1: they really screwed with his business. He's you know, they
4:25
Speaker 1: collected in crowds on his farm. They you know, would
4:28
Speaker 1: harass him at his house. They threatened people that worked
4:31
Speaker 1: for him, like his blacksmith apparently got a letter threatening
4:34
Speaker 1: him with murder if he did any more work for him.
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Speaker 1: They threatened his laundress to stop washing his clothes, and
4:41
Speaker 1: he couldn't get anybody to do any kind of work
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Speaker 1: for him, basically and ruined his business. It became a
4:45
Speaker 1: big story, like not just there, but kind of internationally.
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Speaker 1: The British newspapers picked it up. The British newspapers also
4:54
Speaker 1: raised funds to send fifty Northern Irish loyalists to harvest
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Speaker 1: his potato crop, because you could didn't get anyone to
5:00
Speaker 1: do it because they were afraid they'd get you know,
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Speaker 1: physically beaten or harassed, and they were protected by British troops.
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Speaker 1: And apparently, by one account, it cost ten thousand pounds
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Speaker 1: to harvest five hundred pounds worth of potatoes from those
5:14
Speaker 1: Northern Irish loyalists.
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Speaker 2: I did some conversions, let's hear it. So if they
5:20
Speaker 2: spent ten thousand pounds sterling to harvest these potatoes, they
5:24
Speaker 2: spent a million pounds sterling or one point four million
5:29
Speaker 2: dollars in today's money to harvest fifty two thousand pounds
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Speaker 2: sterling or seventy thousand dollars worth of potatoes. Isn't that insane?
5:38
Speaker 2: That really just drives it home. That's why I do
5:40
Speaker 2: those conversions, Yeah, because I want to drive at home.
5:43
Speaker 2: How nuts?
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Speaker 1: That was totally nuts. He left Ireland boycott did in disgrace.
5:49
Speaker 1: It was a very successful challenge to his authority. Can't
5:52
Speaker 1: call it a boycott yet, but you could very soon
5:56
Speaker 1: because American journalist James Redpath said, you know what, the
6:00
Speaker 1: first person who used that as a verb was a
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Speaker 1: local priest, believe it or not. His name was Father O'Malley,
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Speaker 1: who said, I believe he suggested the land League try
6:10
Speaker 1: the same thing on another landlord named Brown, and he said,
6:13
Speaker 1: let's do what they did to boycott. Let's do a
6:16
Speaker 1: boycott on this Brown. That's what we're gonna do. We're
6:19
Speaker 1: going to boycott Brown. See the word is a verb,
6:23
Speaker 1: it's boycott. You understand.
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Speaker 2: That was a great father O'Malley.
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Speaker 1: Thanks.
6:28
Speaker 2: Yeah, And so just by covering father O'Malley using it
6:32
Speaker 2: as a verb. Writing about these new boycotts, James Redpath,
6:37
Speaker 2: who appears to have been a contemporaryaneous journalist to this time.
6:43
Speaker 2: He kind of helped generate this idea that you could
6:46
Speaker 2: actually get stuff done by boycotting. People check this out.
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Speaker 2: And so I think in the next year there are
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Speaker 2: more than a thousand boycotts in Ireland without social media.
6:59
Speaker 1: Yeah, there were thousand boycotts, and that means father O'Malley
7:03
Speaker 1: one hundred thousand times said, remember it's called boycotten.
7:08
Speaker 2: That is so good. We're going to get two emails
7:11
Speaker 2: from people who aren't even Irish that are mad at
7:14
Speaker 2: us for doing that. Yeah, and then fifteen emails from
7:18
Speaker 2: people from Ireland who are like that was a hilarious
7:20
Speaker 2: chuck totally, that's how it goes.
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Speaker 1: Yeah, and maybe one from father a father O'Malley, because
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Speaker 1: I know there's a bunch of them.
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Speaker 2: Ye, I'm going to say, that doesn't narrow it down
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Speaker 2: at all.
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Speaker 1: Yeah.
7:30
Speaker 2: So yeah, that's where the whole boycott got started in
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Speaker 2: County Mayo, Ireland. And since then people have studied these
7:38
Speaker 2: things and have really kind of gotten down to almost
7:42
Speaker 2: the science what it would take to make a boycott effective,
7:46
Speaker 2: and there have been a lot of effective boycotts over
7:48
Speaker 2: the years. We're going to talk about some of them,
7:50
Speaker 2: but to just kind of pull apart the nuts in
7:53
Speaker 2: the bolts. There's just a handful of things that you
7:56
Speaker 2: really have to do just right, and then it's sprinkle
7:59
Speaker 2: it with a little bit of luck and you could
8:02
Speaker 2: have an effective boycott on your hands.
8:04
Speaker 1: I think you meant just a little bit of luck.
8:07
Speaker 2: Yeah, a little bit of leper kind.
8:09
Speaker 1: Dust right, Yeah, for sure. These are the one, two, three, four,
8:14
Speaker 1: five six things you need to do. If you you know,
8:17
Speaker 1: you can boycott your day away. But if you want
8:19
Speaker 1: to really be effective these there at least i'd say
8:22
Speaker 1: probably four out of six of these need to be around.
8:24
Speaker 2: Yeah. Six steps to ruining target's market share.
8:29
Speaker 1: You gotta have a clear goal in mine, which means
8:31
Speaker 1: you have an outcome in mind. Basically m hm. You
8:34
Speaker 1: want to narrow target. So you want to either target
8:36
Speaker 1: like a very narrow like a product or just a
8:38
Speaker 1: single company. H That's why sometimes when I think about like, yeah,
8:42
Speaker 1: you're targeting this company, but like the parent company isn't targeted.
8:47
Speaker 1: I don't know. That's where it can get a little messy.
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Speaker 2: I think, yeah, and poor targets, Like can you guys
8:50
Speaker 2: stop using the word target when you're talking about boycotts.
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Speaker 1: Uh, there's also awareness and education, because your your goal
8:58
Speaker 1: here is to not only getting them to change whatever
9:01
Speaker 1: they're doing, but to bring awareness and educate people and
9:04
Speaker 1: whatever you feel like they're doing wrong.
9:05
Speaker 2: Well. Plus also the more support you have, the better
9:07
Speaker 2: off you are.
9:08
Speaker 1: Yeah, yeah, good point.
9:10
Speaker 2: You also want to reach core customers. This is a
9:12
Speaker 2: very important point.
9:13
Speaker 1: Yeah.
9:13
Speaker 2: They've turned up an expert in boycotts and studying boycotts
9:17
Speaker 2: who said, essentially, if you have a bunch of PEDA
9:20
Speaker 2: members who are boycotting Kentucky Fried Chicken, like, that's not
9:24
Speaker 2: going to have much an effect because none of those
9:26
Speaker 2: PEDA members were ever buying Kentucky Fried Chicken in the
9:29
Speaker 2: first place. And yeah, maybe you could generate some public sympathy,
9:32
Speaker 2: but you're not getting to their core customers necessarily. Yeah,
9:37
Speaker 2: and that's what makes it effective.
9:38
Speaker 1: What else, Yeah, Uh, there's sustain Uh, there's substitutability. This
9:43
Speaker 1: is a big one, because if you can very easily
9:48
Speaker 1: switch to another brand of whatever, then it's going to
9:51
Speaker 1: make your boycott far more effective. Like if then you know,
9:54
Speaker 1: we'll get to other examples later. But like you know,
9:57
Speaker 1: with the big blood Light boycott was a very big
9:59
Speaker 1: and we're going to cover later. It was really easy
10:01
Speaker 1: for the people who wanted a boycott by light to
10:03
Speaker 1: switch to another, like an expensive light beer. So that
10:06
Speaker 1: was a pretty effective boycott because it's like super easy. Yeah,
10:09
Speaker 1: I'll just drink Miller Led or whatever, right.
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Speaker 2: Or I'll go to churches or Popeyes rather than Kentucky
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Speaker 2: Fried Chicken exactly. And then also like if you want
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Speaker 2: a successful boycott, you have to really like nail in
10:23
Speaker 2: that bottom line. You really got to hurt the company
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Speaker 2: financially if you want to make them at least start
10:30
Speaker 2: listening to you, if not actually enact the change that
10:33
Speaker 2: you're looking for. And you know, in times past, essentially
10:38
Speaker 2: pre social media era, that was the one measure of boycotts,
10:43
Speaker 2: that is how you got a company to respond. You
10:45
Speaker 2: started really affecting either their sales or their stock price,
10:49
Speaker 2: and more and more often than not their stock price. Nowadays,
10:53
Speaker 2: because of social media, bad press can spread so fast
10:56
Speaker 2: and so far and so wide that just getting like
11:00
Speaker 2: negative press can actually make large corporations or organizations change
11:06
Speaker 2: their stance on something or make them drop their stance
11:10
Speaker 2: in total.
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Speaker 1: Yeah, for sure, that's a very good point. It's a
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Speaker 1: little bit different ballgame these days. Should we take our break? Yeah,
11:17
Speaker 1: all right, we'll take a break. We'll be right back
11:19
Speaker 1: to as promised, talk about some of the most famous
11:22
Speaker 1: boycotts throughout history. All right, we're back in this promise.
11:55
Speaker 1: We're gonna take you on a little walk through the
11:57
Speaker 1: history of boycotts. And we got to start with Colonial
12:00
Speaker 1: because they were good at it. A lot of times
12:02
Speaker 1: they were boycotting an act that was passed by the
12:06
Speaker 1: British that they did not like. Over here in the
12:09
Speaker 1: New Colonies. They had some pretty wicked branding with slogans
12:13
Speaker 1: like no taxation without representation. They were pretty good at
12:17
Speaker 1: that kind of thing. And the first one we're going
12:19
Speaker 1: to talk about is seventeen sixty five. I know we've
12:22
Speaker 1: talked about, you know, all these kind of here and
12:24
Speaker 1: there in the life of the show. But the Stamp
12:26
Speaker 1: Act was passed in sixty five, which was a tax
12:29
Speaker 1: on paper goods and documents and things like that, and
12:33
Speaker 1: the merchants in Boston and New York said, nope, we're
12:36
Speaker 1: going to sign a non importation agreement and we're not
12:40
Speaker 1: going to import goods from England anymore. And it worked
12:42
Speaker 1: about a year later, Parliament repealed the Stamp Act.
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Speaker 2: Yeah, first boycott and the we should say the American colonies.
12:49
Speaker 2: It could see our Australian and New Zealand listeners. Good,
12:51
Speaker 2: I don't remember any of this, what you're talking about.
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Speaker 1: Yeah, lots of colonies.
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Speaker 2: This happened in the American colonies, right, that's right. Shortly
12:59
Speaker 2: after that, so Parliament's trying to pay for the Seven
13:02
Speaker 2: Years War, the French Indian Wars, what the American colonists
13:05
Speaker 2: called it. So they were then now directly taxing the
13:08
Speaker 2: American colonies, and they followed up with the Stamp Act
13:12
Speaker 2: with the Townsend Revenue Act in seventeen sixty seven. It
13:16
Speaker 2: taxed a bunch of different stuff. The colonists organized a
13:20
Speaker 2: bunch of protests and boycotts again, and Parliament responded and
13:25
Speaker 2: they repealed the Townsend Act three years later, but they
13:28
Speaker 2: kept one part of it. They kept a tax on tea.
13:32
Speaker 2: Everyone loved tea in the American colonies, as I'm sure
13:35
Speaker 2: in Australia and New Zealand too at the time. So
13:37
Speaker 2: it was a big deal to have this big tax
13:40
Speaker 2: on tea. And so the American colonists said, well, we're
13:43
Speaker 2: not going to drink British tea, and in Parliament said oh, yeah,
13:47
Speaker 2: well get this. We're going to give the East India
13:50
Speaker 2: Company basically free reign on selling below costs for tea,
13:55
Speaker 2: so that even with this tax, it's going to cost
13:58
Speaker 2: you less for tea than buying this smuggled illegal tea
14:02
Speaker 2: that normally is cheaper with the tax.
14:04
Speaker 1: Right.
14:04
Speaker 2: So some merchants were like, well, it sounds kind of
14:07
Speaker 2: good to me. I can make more money. And the
14:09
Speaker 2: people here in the American colonies we call the patriots,
14:13
Speaker 2: the founding fathers said nay to that, and that actually
14:17
Speaker 2: led to the Boston Tea Party.
14:19
Speaker 1: Yeah, the Sons of Liberty said no, thanks for get
14:22
Speaker 1: a demputee in the Hobba.
14:23
Speaker 2: Wow. I mean, you are killing it today all over
14:26
Speaker 2: the place.
14:27
Speaker 1: And that's what they did. In seventeen seventy four of
14:30
Speaker 1: the First Continental Congress passed a colony wide ban on
14:33
Speaker 1: all trade with Britain. And that was the beginning of
14:38
Speaker 1: what would become a war.
14:39
Speaker 2: Yeah, it worked then, it worked later And I mean
14:43
Speaker 2: they didn't have a name for this because this was
14:46
Speaker 2: before the County Mayo Boycott's and Charles Boycott. But they
14:50
Speaker 2: were like this unnamed thing that we're doing. It really
14:53
Speaker 2: kind of works, and so it inspired other groups that
14:57
Speaker 2: came along in America over the court. So the coming centuries,
15:01
Speaker 2: especially if you were part of a civil rights organization,
15:06
Speaker 2: boycotts proved very effective. They are really worthwhile to do
15:11
Speaker 2: because most of the time, if you're agitating for civil rights,
15:15
Speaker 2: you have a group of true believers who are willing
15:19
Speaker 2: to actually work at this. And one of the first
15:22
Speaker 2: groups fighting for civil rights in the United States were
15:25
Speaker 2: the Quakers Quaker abolitionists, and they formed something called the
15:28
Speaker 2: Free Produce Movement.
15:31
Speaker 1: Yeah, this was in the eighteen forties through the Civil
15:33
Speaker 1: War basically, and they boycotted goods made by enslaved people,
15:37
Speaker 1: cotton of course being one of the keys there. And
15:39
Speaker 1: as far as they were concerned, like, hey, if you're
15:42
Speaker 1: buying the stuff, you're supporting slavery. So the Free Produce
15:46
Speaker 1: Movement sort of tackled that. Another obvious example as far
15:49
Speaker 1: as civil rights go is the great Montgomery bus Boycott,
15:54
Speaker 1: which we covered in detail in our episode from February
15:57
Speaker 1: twenty eighteen. Rosa Parks colon Asient of Change, So you
16:01
Speaker 1: can go listen to that episode for the full rundown
16:04
Speaker 1: of the Montgomery bus boycott. But that was a couple
16:07
Speaker 1: of highlights for me was the fact that before Rosa
16:10
Speaker 1: Parks came along. I always want a chance to shout
16:14
Speaker 1: out fifteen year old Claudette Colvin who in March nineteen
16:17
Speaker 1: fifty five refused to move so a white passenger could
16:20
Speaker 1: take her seat. She was also yanked off the bus
16:23
Speaker 1: and arrested by the cops. But they would end up
16:25
Speaker 1: rallying around Rosa Parks instead about nine months later. And
16:30
Speaker 1: then the other thing I just wanted to highlight, and
16:32
Speaker 1: again you should listen to that episode because it's really
16:34
Speaker 1: in depth, but was that the black community rallied around
16:38
Speaker 1: each other in like a big way, Like black taxi
16:40
Speaker 1: drivers would charged the same fare as the bus fair
16:43
Speaker 1: would be. They had volunteers organizing carpools. They had shoe
16:47
Speaker 1: drives because people were walking so much, they were wearing
16:50
Speaker 1: their shoes out to get people in fresh shoes. And
16:52
Speaker 1: it's a really beautiful moment in American history.
16:55
Speaker 2: Yeah, and it was a real struggle for them because
16:58
Speaker 2: this is how black people in Montgomery largely got around
17:01
Speaker 2: was the bus. So to give that up was a
17:03
Speaker 2: big deal, and it was a successful boycott. It lasted
17:06
Speaker 2: three hundred and eighty two days until the Supreme Court
17:10
Speaker 2: ruled that segregation on buses was unconstitutional. If your boycott
17:15
Speaker 2: leads to a Supreme Court ruling that what you're fighting
17:18
Speaker 2: against is unconstitutional, that is a successful boycott, Yeah, for sure.
17:23
Speaker 2: And then one other thing about the Montgomery bus boycott
17:27
Speaker 2: is that it directly inspired another boycott a few years
17:29
Speaker 2: later that involved the United farm Workers grapegrowers or grape harvesters.
17:34
Speaker 2: I should say that was led by Caesar Chavez, and
17:37
Speaker 2: I mean one of the things that he did that
17:40
Speaker 2: also makes boycott successful that we talked about was educating
17:43
Speaker 2: the public. They created bumper stickers that said uvas, no,
17:47
Speaker 2: no grapes. They told people what was going on, and
17:50
Speaker 2: they got public support. That really helped these boycotts really
17:55
Speaker 2: helped put the pressure on the grape growers to give
17:58
Speaker 2: the grape harvesters better work and can nditions.
18:01
Speaker 1: Can we talk about apartheid?
18:02
Speaker 2: I think we should so.
18:04
Speaker 1: Apartheid was segregation in South Africa. It was their version
18:09
Speaker 1: of legal segregation of their people of the white minority
18:14
Speaker 1: and the black majority in South Africa, and it was
18:17
Speaker 1: around since nineteen forty eight through basically the mid nineties
18:22
Speaker 1: to when it finally dissolved, I think was like ninety four.
18:25
Speaker 1: And the repeal of apartheid is partially credited to international pressure,
18:31
Speaker 1: Boycott's sanctions, divestment and little Stevie van zandt Yeah, and
18:36
Speaker 1: little Stevie VanZant. We'll get to him in a sec
18:38
Speaker 1: But the nonviolent protests were a big part of it,
18:42
Speaker 1: led by the African National Congress. Nelson Mandela was one
18:45
Speaker 1: of the leaders in the ANC. So in nineteen fifty nine,
18:48
Speaker 1: A and C president Albert Luthuli said, Hey, great Britain,
18:53
Speaker 1: why don't you boycatt all South American produce, all South
18:56
Speaker 1: African produce the first time they kind of reached out
18:59
Speaker 1: Internet for help like that, and so South Africa said,
19:03
Speaker 1: you know what, we're outlawing the ANC and Nelson Mandela,
19:07
Speaker 1: you're going to jail.
19:08
Speaker 2: Yeah, yeah, for suggesting a boycott, not even staging a boycott,
19:13
Speaker 2: but suggesting one. The UN got involved in nineteen sixty
19:16
Speaker 2: two and they were like, hey, guys, this is not okay.
19:19
Speaker 2: We all or you guys need to start breaking ties
19:23
Speaker 2: with South Africa, And everybody said nuts to that. And
19:27
Speaker 2: it took a bunch of different sports organizations to finally
19:30
Speaker 2: get the public aware of it and hence getting governments
19:33
Speaker 2: involved in doing something about dismantling apartheid by turning their
19:37
Speaker 2: backs in South Africa. And the first sports organization to
19:41
Speaker 2: cut ties without South Africa in protests of its apartheid
19:45
Speaker 2: policies was the International Table Tennis Federation, who did so
19:49
Speaker 2: all the way back in nineteen fifty six.
19:51
Speaker 1: Pretty great. Yeah, I love that. In sixty four the
19:54
Speaker 1: IOC committee said no South African teams can participate in
19:58
Speaker 1: the Olympics. Yeah, and that was a band that lasted
20:00
Speaker 1: from sixty four to ninety two, so very long standing.
20:04
Speaker 1: There were boycott's in Britain when South African cricket and
20:07
Speaker 1: rugby teams which were there.
20:09
Speaker 2: Yeah, there was a very famous Battle for Swansea, I think,
20:12
Speaker 2: where there was like a rugby protest that the cops
20:15
Speaker 2: and some hooligans started beating up and it just became
20:18
Speaker 2: a huge thing and made international news too.
20:21
Speaker 1: Yeah. I mean I remember all this stuff growing up
20:24
Speaker 1: in the eighties. It was all over the news. You
20:25
Speaker 1: couldn't like, you couldn't like go ten minutes without hearing
20:29
Speaker 1: the word apartheid or anti apartheid.
20:31
Speaker 2: I mean I knew the President of South Africa's name
20:34
Speaker 2: as like a ten year old, because what was it,
20:37
Speaker 2: fw de Clerk.
20:38
Speaker 1: Oh, you're like I knew it at ten. I don't
20:40
Speaker 1: know that.
20:40
Speaker 2: No, I'm almost positive that.
20:42
Speaker 1: Yeah it was, I remember to Clerk.
20:43
Speaker 2: Yet I learned about it from Mad magazine.
20:47
Speaker 1: Of course, the eighties is also when you got college
20:51
Speaker 1: kids involved in that. You know, if you want to
20:54
Speaker 1: get college kids on your side, that's a pretty smart
20:57
Speaker 1: thing to do, because they got nothing else to do,
21:00
Speaker 1: take like a couple of classes a day maybe, And
21:03
Speaker 1: so they got together, started their activism on campus, and
21:08
Speaker 1: more than one hundred and fifty US colleges divested from
21:10
Speaker 1: South Africa, so they withdrew investments in South African companies
21:15
Speaker 1: as institutions as a whole. That was a un cultural boycott,
21:21
Speaker 1: and part of that ended up being something and started
21:24
Speaker 1: in eighty five called the Artist United Against Apartheid, founded
21:26
Speaker 1: by Little Stephen van Zant of the EA Street Band
21:29
Speaker 1: and a producer named Arthur Baker, who organized a song
21:33
Speaker 1: sun City and an album sun City because sun City
21:37
Speaker 1: was a luxury resort in Casino in South Africa that
21:39
Speaker 1: had a lot of big time concerts, and the song
21:41
Speaker 1: basically was I Ain't going to play sun City and
21:45
Speaker 1: it was a you know, it was sort of on
21:46
Speaker 1: the heels of We Are the World, but this one
21:50
Speaker 1: was different because they you know, there were certainly black
21:53
Speaker 1: artists on We Are the World, but not rap and
21:56
Speaker 1: hip hop, and Sun City had Bono of course, and
22:01
Speaker 1: Bob Dylan and Ringo and Bruce of course, Pat Benatar,
22:03
Speaker 1: George Clinton, Joey Ramon in a very weird appearance, Hall
22:09
Speaker 1: and Oates, but not together. They were very much separated.
22:12
Speaker 2: It is so sad to me.
22:14
Speaker 1: Lou Reid also had a very funny appearance Bonnie Rate.
22:16
Speaker 1: But you also had run DMC and Cool Mode, the
22:20
Speaker 1: Fat Boys, DJ Cool Hirk, Grandmaster, Melly Mel, Jimmy Cliff
22:25
Speaker 1: was in there. So it really blended genres in a
22:28
Speaker 1: way that We Are the World did not, and it
22:31
Speaker 1: was a pretty good song. I think it is very eighties.
22:33
Speaker 2: It's definitely worth seeing the video for sure.
22:36
Speaker 1: Yeah, it's pretty cool. I think they ended up raising
22:38
Speaker 1: like a million bucks, so not a lot of money,
22:39
Speaker 1: but awareness is probably one of the biggest things because
22:42
Speaker 1: a lot of artists would not play sun City, but
22:45
Speaker 1: artists did very famously. There's a list the Beach Boys did, Share,
22:48
Speaker 1: did Linda Ronstadt, did Sinatra? Did e Liza Minelli, Rod
22:53
Speaker 1: Stewart very disappointingly, Elton John Queen and Dolly Parton call
22:58
Speaker 1: played sun City.
22:59
Speaker 2: And Dolly oh. You know, so it was fairly heartbreaking
23:03
Speaker 2: to read that, Yeah, because this wasn't like a oh
23:05
Speaker 2: I hadn't heard kind of thing. This was like, I
23:07
Speaker 2: don't care enough, I'm going to go to Sun City.
23:10
Speaker 2: They're paying me a bunch of money to go to
23:13
Speaker 2: this one concert date that I could easily cancel, you.
23:17
Speaker 1: Know, yeah, agreed. Supposedly, I'm not even going to say
23:20
Speaker 1: in their defense because I don't really know what they
23:21
Speaker 1: were thinking, But supposedly they were told by the people
23:24
Speaker 1: at sun City, like, hey, there's an exception for us,
23:27
Speaker 1: and we can actually have a segregated audience, so like
23:30
Speaker 1: you should come play. So I don't know if that's
23:32
Speaker 1: the guys they did in under or not. That's the list.
23:34
Speaker 2: Yeah. So yeah, so this is a big deal. Like
23:37
Speaker 2: sports entertainment, that's a really good way to get your
23:41
Speaker 2: boycott spread far and wide, because that's what the average
23:44
Speaker 2: person is paying attention to more than like the news
23:47
Speaker 2: or foreign policy. They're like, wait a minute, why is
23:50
Speaker 2: cool Mode not going to South Africa? I should probably
23:53
Speaker 2: look into that. And so when you get people into it,
23:57
Speaker 2: things actually happen. Right there was the US Congress passed
24:03
Speaker 2: the Comprehensive Anti Aparthepe Act, and it was one of
24:07
Speaker 2: the more putative sanctions packages the America has ever dealt
24:12
Speaker 2: against any country. And Ronald Reagan even vetoed it and
24:16
Speaker 2: Congress overrode his veto. Was the first time in thirteen
24:19
Speaker 2: years that Congress had overridden a presidential veto, and they said, no,
24:22
Speaker 2: this is getting passed, and so it did get passed.
24:26
Speaker 2: And you know, you might be like, wow, that was
24:28
Speaker 2: brave and assertive of Congress. They must really have cared
24:30
Speaker 2: about dismantling apartheid, and I'm sure some of them did.
24:34
Speaker 2: But I think what it says more than anything is
24:36
Speaker 2: just how far and wide America was anti apartheid by
24:41
Speaker 2: this time. That Congress is like, we're going to override
24:44
Speaker 2: a presidential veto of the most popular president America's had
24:48
Speaker 2: in recent history, because all of our constituents.
24:52
Speaker 1: Are like, go do that, yeah, because they read about
24:55
Speaker 1: cool mode. Yeah, they wouldn't have it, yep. Yeah. And
24:58
Speaker 1: you know a lot of time, when the US does something,
25:01
Speaker 1: the world follows back then at least, and once the
25:04
Speaker 1: US put their sanctions in place, other countries came aboard
25:07
Speaker 1: in Europe and Asia, and a lot of economic pressure
25:10
Speaker 1: was put on South Africa and Mandela was Eventually the
25:13
Speaker 1: Berlin Wall fell in eighty nine, which basically said South
25:17
Speaker 1: Africa is not like a protection against communism in Africa, now,
25:21
Speaker 1: no need for that. Mandela was freed ninety and then
25:24
Speaker 1: over the next four years it was kind of little
25:26
Speaker 1: by little dismantled. I think finally ninety four it was
25:28
Speaker 1: when it was officially over.
25:30
Speaker 2: So that was successful, ful, I would say, for sure.
25:32
Speaker 2: There was another one that was pretty successful that was
25:34
Speaker 2: much more recent. Back in twenty sixteen, in North Carolina,
25:38
Speaker 2: they passed the Public Facilities, Privacy and Security Act, much
25:43
Speaker 2: more well known as the Bathroom Bill, which basically said
25:46
Speaker 2: that in North Carolina, you have to use a public
25:48
Speaker 2: restroom for the sex that you were assigned at birth.
25:51
Speaker 2: So essentially it's like trans people, you can't use public
25:54
Speaker 2: restrooms that you identify with. People call it mean spirited,
25:58
Speaker 2: evil it was anti trains, It was an attack on
26:01
Speaker 2: a group of people, and it really it kind of
26:05
Speaker 2: took off. It became one of the first really viral
26:08
Speaker 2: boycotts on social media back in twenty sixteen. It had
26:12
Speaker 2: a huge effect.
26:14
Speaker 1: Yeah, and this was one where hitting in the wallet
26:16
Speaker 1: was a big deal because corporations got involved. PayPal cancel
26:20
Speaker 1: plans to build an office in Charlotte. You know, entertainers
26:24
Speaker 1: got involved. The course, Springsteen as always the Boss wouldn't
26:26
Speaker 1: play in sun City or Greensboro.
26:29
Speaker 2: Ain't gonna played Greensboro.
26:31
Speaker 1: And then of course a lot of other bands said
26:33
Speaker 1: what the Boss does we follow movie studios pulled out,
26:37
Speaker 1: which hit them in the financial pocketbook. Of course, said
26:41
Speaker 1: we're not going to shoot there. Sports again gets involved.
26:44
Speaker 1: The NCAA moved several different college championships out in North Carolina.
26:48
Speaker 1: The NBA threat to pull the All Star Weekend out
26:50
Speaker 1: of Charlotte.
26:51
Speaker 2: They followed two They moved it to New Orleans that year.
26:54
Speaker 1: Yeah, so all this told cost of the state of
26:56
Speaker 1: North Carolina three point seven six billion dollars in the
27:00
Speaker 1: year that that bill was around. They repealed it in
27:02
Speaker 1: twenty seventeen.
27:04
Speaker 2: Man, that's crazy that's a lot of money to lose
27:06
Speaker 2: in just a year.
27:06
Speaker 1: Chuck, And that's why it was effective.
27:10
Speaker 2: So you want to take a break and come back
27:11
Speaker 2: and talk about whether social media boycotts are effective, let's
27:16
Speaker 2: do it. Okay. So we're back, and we have entered
27:47
Speaker 2: a brand new age of boycotts. Thanks to social media.
27:51
Speaker 2: It is really easy to start a boycott, for a
27:54
Speaker 2: boycott to go viral, and then for the news to
27:57
Speaker 2: report on boycott's and how they did. It's almost it's
28:00
Speaker 2: like a spectator sport to a certain extent. Oh, here's
28:03
Speaker 2: this new boycott how to do? Two months on, I
28:06
Speaker 2: saw an article on Newsweek and the title was, here
28:09
Speaker 2: are the corporations being boycotted in June. It's just become
28:13
Speaker 2: that like pedestrian.
28:15
Speaker 1: Yeah, I mean, we should read this one stat there's
28:17
Speaker 1: one study that found that fifty four percent of top
28:20
Speaker 1: brands more than half have been boycotted, huh, and forty
28:24
Speaker 1: two percent of multinational corporations. And we're not saying like
28:28
Speaker 1: poor multinational corporations, but just sort of driving home the
28:31
Speaker 1: point like you were saying that. I mean, you said,
28:34
Speaker 1: you know, two months later, we'll see how it's doing.
28:36
Speaker 1: Two months later, people might be like, oh, are we
28:38
Speaker 1: boycotting that still?
28:40
Speaker 2: I thought that was done. I thought we'd moved on,
28:42
Speaker 2: which is kind.
28:42
Speaker 1: Of the one of the problems with the social media boycotts.
28:44
Speaker 2: It is because with social media, I mean by definition,
28:47
Speaker 2: it's your attention span is just careening from place to
28:51
Speaker 2: place constantly. It's really hard to stop and focus. And
28:54
Speaker 2: that's a big thing that boycotts require, his focus, dedication,
29:00
Speaker 2: organization growth. When you know two, yeah, when three quarters
29:05
Speaker 2: of the people who are boycotting with you the first
29:07
Speaker 2: week moved on to something else, your boycott's hurting, right.
29:10
Speaker 2: But that is not to say that boycotts starting on
29:14
Speaker 2: social media aren't effective. And there's a couple in very
29:18
Speaker 2: recent memory that you can use to show how what's
29:22
Speaker 2: effective and what isn't effective, because that's what people like
29:25
Speaker 2: to do with boycotts these days. Talk about that.
29:29
Speaker 1: Yeah, And we should also point out that you're going
29:31
Speaker 1: to hear another word in describing these things. It's a
29:33
Speaker 1: word bycott, and that is the counter to boycott. When
29:37
Speaker 1: because most of these are or political in nature, obviously
29:40
Speaker 1: hot button issues and evenly sort of divided because the
29:44
Speaker 1: United States is pretty much evenly divided at the point
29:46
Speaker 1: politically down.
29:47
Speaker 2: To a guiding Eugene who votes twice for one freach party,
29:53
Speaker 2: just to be fair. That's how divided America is.
29:56
Speaker 1: Yeah, So when there is a boycott, there is also
29:58
Speaker 1: generally a bycot when the other part of the country says, oh, yeah,
30:01
Speaker 1: well I'm going to buy that thing because you don't
30:04
Speaker 1: want to buy that thing, because we like what they're saying. So,
30:07
Speaker 1: Goya is a very popular Hispanic food brand here in
30:10
Speaker 1: the US. Great black beans. I love this Goya black beans, Goya,
30:16
Speaker 1: that's right. In twenty twenty, it was big news when
30:19
Speaker 1: the CEO of Goya attended an event at the White
30:21
Speaker 1: House and was praising Donald Trump, and a lot of
30:26
Speaker 1: people got upset about that, and Democratic Representative Alexandria Acasio
30:30
Speaker 1: Cartes said, hey, we need a boycott Goya. And it
30:35
Speaker 1: turns out that that didn't work so well because it
30:37
Speaker 1: didn't hit enough of those things that you need to
30:39
Speaker 1: do to have a successful.
30:40
Speaker 2: Boycott, and also because AOC is a bycot magnet for sure.
30:45
Speaker 2: So there were a couple of things. So there was
30:48
Speaker 2: a The boycott sparked a bycot among conservatives because in
30:53
Speaker 2: the United States. For those of you who don't live here,
30:56
Speaker 2: when you choose a side on a boycott, you're defending
31:00
Speaker 2: your political beliefs. That's just how they work here. I'm
31:03
Speaker 2: not sure if it's like that the rest of the
31:04
Speaker 2: world around, but that is definitely how they work here.
31:07
Speaker 2: And the reasons that Goya wasn't successful as a buy
31:11
Speaker 2: or as a boycott was because there are a lot
31:14
Speaker 2: of people Latin Hispanic households who did not have a
31:17
Speaker 2: dog in that fight, who did not choose sides, who
31:19
Speaker 2: were not like, what are you talking about? We buy
31:22
Speaker 2: Goya products, like this doesn't make any sense. And then
31:25
Speaker 2: a lot of those households also are conservatives too, so
31:28
Speaker 2: they probably would have bought Goya products had they not
31:31
Speaker 2: been buying them already, just to show their support.
31:34
Speaker 1: Yeah, and the bycot that it triggered, apparently Goya got
31:37
Speaker 1: a twenty two percent bump in sales because of that bycot,
31:42
Speaker 1: but it did not last long because, like you said,
31:45
Speaker 1: a lot of those people who were like, yeah, I'm
31:47
Speaker 1: gonna start buying Goya stuff because this guy praised Donald Trump,
31:50
Speaker 1: they weren't Goya customers before. So maybe sometimes you get
31:54
Speaker 1: someone from a bycot that's like, hey, these black beans
31:57
Speaker 1: are dynamite. That that's my brand from now on. But
32:00
Speaker 1: in this case, it was a quick bump in sales
32:03
Speaker 1: and then they were like nope, back to old l
32:05
Speaker 1: Paso and those sales kind of leveled out.
32:09
Speaker 2: Yes, that's actually on the if you flip flop the
32:13
Speaker 2: political spectrum. The same thing happened to Nike not too
32:17
Speaker 2: many years ago when they supported Colin Kaepernick while he
32:20
Speaker 2: was taking a knee during the national anthem, and there
32:24
Speaker 2: was a huge backlash on social media against Nike for
32:27
Speaker 2: supporting him. Their people were burning their Nikes and making
32:31
Speaker 2: videos of it, posting it on social media. But it
32:33
Speaker 2: spurred a bycot to support Nike, and Nike made out
32:38
Speaker 2: like bandits for that. They had what analysts suspect was
32:43
Speaker 2: an additional six billion dollars in sale in a handful
32:47
Speaker 2: of weeks following the boycott. The call for the boycott,
32:52
Speaker 2: the buycot gave them that much extra money. The support
32:55
Speaker 2: came out for them like that.
32:57
Speaker 1: That's right. Then the NFL got back at Colin Kapernick
33:00
Speaker 1: by essentially blackballing him.
33:02
Speaker 2: Yeah, so we should probably mention.
33:03
Speaker 1: Bud Light because we mentioned it earlier. That was another
33:06
Speaker 1: very recent one. In twenty twenty three, transgender influencer Dylan
33:10
Speaker 1: mulvaney had a TikTok video announcing a contest sponsored by
33:14
Speaker 1: bud Light, and in that video had the nerve to
33:17
Speaker 1: show a can of bud Light that the company center
33:19
Speaker 1: with an image of her face on it. And that
33:21
Speaker 1: was it. The conservative right got up in arms and
33:26
Speaker 1: they said bud Light is dead to us, Go woke,
33:29
Speaker 1: go broke. And in the three months following that post
33:33
Speaker 1: bud Light sales went down twenty eight percent compared to
33:35
Speaker 1: the same period in prior years, and the damage was
33:39
Speaker 1: worse in Republican leaning districts I think thirty two percent
33:42
Speaker 1: compared to twenty two percent in Democrat districts.
33:45
Speaker 2: Yeah, but ultimately overall, eight months after the initial boycott
33:50
Speaker 2: they were down thirty two percent overall in sales.
33:53
Speaker 1: Yeah, So I mean it was a successful boycott by
33:56
Speaker 1: all accounts.
33:56
Speaker 2: Man, they went berserk about that. It was a big
34:00
Speaker 2: deal here in the US, that bud Light. So just
34:03
Speaker 2: to be clear, they sent Dylan mulvaney one can with
34:07
Speaker 2: Dylan Mulvaney's face on it. This was not for sale
34:10
Speaker 2: or anything like that, but that was all it took.
34:13
Speaker 2: And yeah, bud Light just took a beating. They were
34:17
Speaker 2: the number one selling beer. I don't even think just
34:20
Speaker 2: light beer, I think beer in the United States. And
34:23
Speaker 2: they dropped down. They dropped down to third in just
34:26
Speaker 2: a few weeks. Right. The reason why, there are a
34:29
Speaker 2: few reasons why substitutability. You could easily just switch to
34:33
Speaker 2: Corslight Miller's Light, and your tastebuds would have no idea
34:36
Speaker 2: that you'd switched. But apparently a lot of people switched
34:40
Speaker 2: to MODELO Especial, which we'll get to in a second.
34:43
Speaker 2: And then also, and this explains why bud Light did this,
34:46
Speaker 2: because in retrospect, you're like, that was one of the
34:49
Speaker 2: more tone deaf things that a brand has ever done.
34:52
Speaker 2: But it turns out bud Light's customer base is pretty
34:55
Speaker 2: evenly divided along the political spectrum. So I think they
34:59
Speaker 2: just thought like they were doing what they do and
35:02
Speaker 2: we're clearly not expecting that kind of backlash. Companies in
35:06
Speaker 2: that situation are much more vulnerable to a backlash when
35:11
Speaker 2: they take any kind of political stance or social stance.
35:14
Speaker 1: Yeah, like when it's a pretty even split on who
35:17
Speaker 1: likes your product, exactly.
35:19
Speaker 2: Yeah, because I mean if it were all like if
35:21
Speaker 2: bud Light's entire customer base were LGBTQ, they put if
35:25
Speaker 2: they had Dylan mulvany be like a brand ambassador, it
35:27
Speaker 2: would not matter at all. But because half of their
35:30
Speaker 2: people probably have unflattering views on trans people, yes, it
35:35
Speaker 2: really put a herding on them. And then the last
35:38
Speaker 2: one was observability is what they call it.
35:41
Speaker 1: Yeah, sometimes you consume a product in private, like the
35:44
Speaker 1: black beans you're eating.
35:45
Speaker 2: Right out of the can.
35:47
Speaker 1: Yeah, you're not just walking around eating a can of
35:49
Speaker 1: black beans in public. But other stuff, you know, it's
35:52
Speaker 1: a little more visible and like you know, tailgating and
35:54
Speaker 1: being out in public with a beer, being in a
35:56
Speaker 1: bar with a beer, it's a much more public product
35:58
Speaker 1: that you're consuming. And researchers found that even if you
36:01
Speaker 1: were liberal and you were a beer drinker, you might
36:04
Speaker 1: have avoided drinking bud Light in public just because of
36:07
Speaker 1: the controversy over it.
36:08
Speaker 2: One of the big there's an ironic twist I guess
36:10
Speaker 2: to this whole thing. I said that MODELO Especial became
36:14
Speaker 2: I think the number one selling beer after bud Light
36:16
Speaker 2: dropped off in the couple weeks after the boycott started
36:20
Speaker 2: against bud Light, Modello's sales went up thirty six million
36:25
Speaker 2: dollars more than bud light sales.
36:27
Speaker 1: Yeah, that's amazing.
36:29
Speaker 2: Yeah, so Modello is like, this is great. The thing
36:32
Speaker 2: is is Modello and bud Light are both owned and
36:35
Speaker 2: distributed by the same companies, So it was like robbing
36:38
Speaker 2: Peter to pay Paul, or a Twitter user put it.
36:41
Speaker 2: I think I found this on Vox maybe in an
36:44
Speaker 2: article by Stephanie grob Plante. It was like boycotting the
36:48
Speaker 2: Big Mac by eating a quarter pounder instead.
36:52
Speaker 1: Yeah, and that's kind of what I was talking about
36:54
Speaker 1: earlier with just I think boycotts are just not thought
36:58
Speaker 1: through as much these days because I don't know, there's
37:01
Speaker 1: so many mega companies that own all these smaller things.
37:04
Speaker 1: You really got to do your homework to figure out, like,
37:07
Speaker 1: wait a minute, I can't switch to this thing because
37:09
Speaker 1: they're also owned by that thing.
37:10
Speaker 2: Yeah. I think though that one's not the most slammed
37:13
Speaker 2: dunk ironic twist there is, because I think even if
37:18
Speaker 2: they knew that it was the same general company Anheuser Busch,
37:22
Speaker 2: the iyer was directed at bud Light. They wanted to
37:25
Speaker 2: punish bud Light the brand specifically.
37:28
Speaker 1: Yeah.
37:28
Speaker 2: Yeah, and they were definitely successful with that.
37:31
Speaker 1: Yeah. Good point.
37:32
Speaker 2: So, Chuck, there's a couple of things. I think we
37:34
Speaker 2: should wrap it up by talking about, like whether these
37:38
Speaker 2: things are worth doing, whether companies should take a social stance.
37:42
Speaker 2: Let's do that, shall we?
37:44
Speaker 1: Yeah. I mean, first of all, we mentioned earlier that
37:48
Speaker 1: it doesn't necessarily have to be the big financial hit
37:50
Speaker 1: to cause the problem these days, just the bad press
37:54
Speaker 1: and then a negative press can hurt a company's reputation.
37:58
Speaker 1: That could potentially hurt a stock price, but I mean, really,
38:00
Speaker 1: the only thing that's going to damage the stock price
38:03
Speaker 1: or bad sales. So at the end of the day,
38:05
Speaker 1: it kind of is money. They can probably withstand bad press,
38:08
Speaker 1: but they don't love it.
38:10
Speaker 2: No, But if you can turn the markets on the company,
38:12
Speaker 2: that's a big deal.
38:14
Speaker 1: Yeah for sure. As far as whether people think companies
38:18
Speaker 1: should get involved with this, it depends on who you asked.
38:21
Speaker 1: There was a survey I think from twenty seventeen, is
38:24
Speaker 1: that right, Mm hmm, yeah, not too long ago. It's
38:26
Speaker 1: found that ninety percent of American consumers expect companies to
38:30
Speaker 1: take an active role in addressing social concerns. There was
38:34
Speaker 1: a different survey that found that sixty three percent of
38:36
Speaker 1: millennials and sixty percent of gen xers I think companies
38:40
Speaker 1: have a more important role than governments do in driving
38:42
Speaker 1: social change. So those are pretty disparate numbers.
38:45
Speaker 2: Right, And people who advise companies, like there's an entire
38:48
Speaker 2: industry on advising companies on stuff like this. They say
38:52
Speaker 2: it comes down to the company culture. Do you stand
38:54
Speaker 2: for things? Is are you the kind of company that
38:56
Speaker 2: would ever stand for anything? Or are you just trying
38:58
Speaker 2: to sell duck boots? You know, you have to ask
39:01
Speaker 2: yourself these kind of things. Do you want to change
39:04
Speaker 2: to be a different kind of company? Who knows. But
39:07
Speaker 2: one of the things that they find is that it
39:10
Speaker 2: is often worse to take a stand and then change
39:13
Speaker 2: your stance than to take your stance at all, like
39:16
Speaker 2: Target's wishy washy stance on DEI policies, right or Apparently
39:22
Speaker 2: Another big one is companies will celebrate Pride Month in
39:25
Speaker 2: a country that's that where Pride Month is much more acceptable,
39:29
Speaker 2: they and then just not celebrate it in other countries
39:32
Speaker 2: where there is Pride Month but it's not quite as
39:35
Speaker 2: accepted as it is in the other countries. So having
39:38
Speaker 2: like a wishy washy stance on stuff that can really
39:42
Speaker 2: damage your company's image because if you basically are telling
39:45
Speaker 2: the world like, we don't really actually have any values,
39:48
Speaker 2: we don't really care about anything social, We're just trying
39:51
Speaker 2: to make money here. So even if you are a
39:53
Speaker 2: company that chooses to take a stance, you really need
39:57
Speaker 2: to stick with it and just stick with it did
40:00
Speaker 2: or else just don't do it at all, but don't
40:02
Speaker 2: make it take a stand and then backpedal.
40:05
Speaker 1: Josh's advice to Corporate America, right.
40:08
Speaker 2: And then on the other side, if you're just an
40:11
Speaker 2: everyday person and you want to take part in a boycott.
40:14
Speaker 2: I think one of the issues, Chuck, that we kind
40:16
Speaker 2: of were hinting around throughout this episode is that a
40:20
Speaker 2: problem is that you can become complacent like you're doing
40:23
Speaker 2: enough by you know, liking a tweet and then not
40:26
Speaker 2: buying Kellogg's cereal for a week, and at the end
40:30
Speaker 2: of the day you feel like you're doing your part
40:32
Speaker 2: when you're really not doing much and there's a lot
40:35
Speaker 2: more work to be done. That's kind of a big
40:38
Speaker 2: danger of it, for sure.
40:39
Speaker 1: I got to tell you, rand I'm very relieved because
40:42
Speaker 1: a few minutes ago, I thought you were about to
40:44
Speaker 1: say something about ll Bean. Nope, when you mentioned duck boots,
40:49
Speaker 1: I was like, oh no, don't tell me. I got
40:52
Speaker 1: to get rid of my duck boots.
40:53
Speaker 2: Yeah, I've got mine too, And luckily there are other
40:56
Speaker 2: brands that make duck boots, but not like llll Beans. No, though, sure,
41:01
Speaker 2: I've got some Sperry's that are pretty good. Oh yeah, okay,
41:05
Speaker 2: I like Sperry's, So there you go. And then lastly, Chuck,
41:09
Speaker 2: I actually corresponded with a professor at Melbourne Business School
41:14
Speaker 2: in Melbourne, Victoria, Australia about something. Yeah, and I did
41:18
Speaker 2: that with Jill Klein. I found an article called why
41:20
Speaker 2: we Boycott Consumer Motivations for boycott participation and it's from
41:25
Speaker 2: all the way back in two thousand and four. But
41:26
Speaker 2: I asked her, like, okay, is this does this still apply?
41:29
Speaker 2: And she said yes, because these four motivators that the
41:32
Speaker 2: study turned up were based on basic psychological processes that
41:36
Speaker 2: are unlikely to change in twenty years. That's what she said, right,
41:40
Speaker 2: So they found four motivators that are that are the
41:43
Speaker 2: better predictors of whether somebody takes part in a boycott.
41:47
Speaker 2: Do you want to hear them or should we just
41:49
Speaker 2: end the episode here? Hey, it's up to you, Bun,
41:52
Speaker 2: I'll go forward with them. One is egregiousness, That is
41:55
Speaker 2: how badly a company behaved or how bad the thing
41:59
Speaker 2: that the come any who supporting is efficacy, So the
42:03
Speaker 2: person's judgment on whether the boycott's going to make any
42:06
Speaker 2: difference whatsoever self enhancement is one. Is it going to
42:10
Speaker 2: make them look good? Is it going to make them
42:11
Speaker 2: feel good about themselves for doing it? And then estimated
42:14
Speaker 2: participation of others. So the more people you have joining in,
42:18
Speaker 2: the more the person is likely to join in, which
42:20
Speaker 2: I call the cool mode effect.
42:23
Speaker 1: It's a good thing I got here because I know
42:25
Speaker 1: for a fact she rolled that up, put it in
42:27
Speaker 1: a bottle, corked it and threw it in the ocean.
42:28
Speaker 2: I couldn't believe how fast that current carried it here
42:31
Speaker 2: in like twelve hours.
42:33
Speaker 1: Pretty impressive, Pretty impressive.
42:35
Speaker 2: So thanks a lot doctor Jill Klein of Melbourne Business
42:39
Speaker 2: School and her co author Andrew John, who also weighed
42:43
Speaker 2: in on the email.
42:44
Speaker 1: I love it.
42:45
Speaker 2: Thanks to everybody who helped us out with this, including Dave,
42:48
Speaker 2: and thank you for listening to this episode, and since
42:51
Speaker 2: I just thanked everybody, it's time for listener mail.
42:57
Speaker 1: This is from a guy and Athens and this is
43:00
Speaker 1: about our styrofoam. Hey guys, longtime listener. I run a
43:03
Speaker 1: business over near Athens where we Athens Storture. That is
43:06
Speaker 1: where we recycle ninety to ninety five percent of our waist.
43:09
Speaker 1: We're primarily a candle company, but also have a quaint
43:12
Speaker 1: retail store in downtown Monroe Nice where we make our
43:15
Speaker 1: own products. When I started the business, I wanted ethical sourcing, sustainability,
43:19
Speaker 1: and health to be our pillars of guidance. We source
43:22
Speaker 1: all all of our materials from sustainable or recycled sources.
43:25
Speaker 1: But we also have a huge recycling program where customers
43:28
Speaker 1: can bring back their cleaned out old containers to be
43:30
Speaker 1: exchanged for discounts on new products.
43:32
Speaker 2: That's awesome because those things are hard to clean out.
43:35
Speaker 1: Yeah, totally. So he's been going to Charm, they have
43:38
Speaker 1: one in Athens, because we mentioned Charm, the great recycling
43:41
Speaker 1: center for hard to recycle materials here in Atlanta that
43:43
Speaker 1: Emily is dedicated to. And they've been going to Charm
43:46
Speaker 1: four years. And he said, since I know the industry
43:50
Speaker 1: lacks some transparency. I've decided to ask one of the
43:51
Speaker 1: folks what they do with low density plastic and styrofoam
43:55
Speaker 1: that I drop off since I heard those things typically
43:57
Speaker 1: have a low conversion rate into new material. And to
44:00
Speaker 1: your pondering question from the episode about styroboam, the rep
44:03
Speaker 1: told me they sell it to a company that actually
44:05
Speaker 1: turns it into synthetic decking material, which I thought was
44:08
Speaker 1: pretty neat.
44:09
Speaker 2: Yeah.
44:10
Speaker 1: I love that, and thanks for all you do and
44:12
Speaker 1: for being a good model of healthy friendship. Hey, hey,
44:14
Speaker 1: how about that.
44:15
Speaker 2: What a great way to put it.
44:16
Speaker 1: And that is for Matt at the Rekindle Candle Company,
44:21
Speaker 1: and you can just look online. This sounds like great
44:23
Speaker 1: stuff with a great core mission. So just check out
44:26
Speaker 1: the Rekindle Candle Company online for Math and S Georgia
44:29
Speaker 1: and buy their stuff.
44:30
Speaker 2: That name is adorable, Matt, I love it. Yeah, thanks
44:33
Speaker 2: a lot for the email, Thanks a lot for what
44:35
Speaker 2: you're doing up there. I'm going to go check out
44:37
Speaker 2: Rekindle Candle Company either online or on person who knows
44:41
Speaker 2: And if you want to be like Matt and send
44:43
Speaker 2: us a great email, you can do. So wrap it up,
44:45
Speaker 2: spank it on the bottom and send it off to
44:47
Speaker 2: stuff podcast at iHeartRadio dot com.
44:53
Speaker 1: Stuff you Should Know is a production of iHeartRadio. For
44:56
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44:59
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