How Boycotts Work (Or Do They?)

We have boycotts coming out of our ears these days, but did you know they go back a couple centuries? And that it’s named after the first poor sap to be boycotted? We follow the history of boycotts up today’s boycott superstars and ask how well they work. See omnystudio.com/listener https://omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

Speaker names marked ? are inferred from speaking time and the show’s known hosts — they are not voice-verified.

• 0:00Speaker 00

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• 0:04Josh Clark?

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• 1:15Speaker 00

  Welcome to Stuff You Should Know, a production of iHeart Radio.

• 1:24Josh Clark?

  Hey, and welcome to the podcast. I'm Josh and there's Chuck, and it's just the two of us. And we are doing an episode on boycotts today because, boy, boycotts really stick in your craw. There's a lot of them. They seem to be overused in this era. And I wanted to see how the whole thing worked, just from watching them happen over and over again.

• 1:47Speaker 02

  Yeah. Well, you know, Webster's defines a boycott as a collective act of refusal?

• 1:53Josh Clark?

  Yeah.

• 1:54Speaker 02

  So does Dave, who helped us with this. But, um, you know, what we're talking about, right? That's when people get together. These days, usually it's a call on social media or something. And they say, hey, we're not going to buy this thing from your store, or we're not going to buy anything from your store, or we're not going to buy anything from your company, or we're not going to buy anything from your state or country, because we want to hit your bottom line, hit you in the wallet, as they say.

• 2:18Josh Clark?

  To get you to change.

• 2:20Speaker 02

  Yeah, I mean, to get you to change, or I think in some people's cases these days, just to be mean, because I hate what you stand for.

• 2:27Josh Clark?

  Yeah, so I don't, I want to say I'm not poo pooing the entire concept of boycotts. What I'm, what I was taking issue with is just how fast and loose they come over and over that if you really followed every boycott, like you would starve to death. There'd be nowhere you could buy food any longer, let alone anything else.

• 2:46Speaker 02

  Well, yeah, and can I quickly say also that these sort of, so many calls for these boycotts in social media, they're also, I feel like a lot of times, like, just not bought out and that like you're boycotting this one thing, but the same company owns this other thing that you like. And it, they just seem to be kind of the dumb version of boycotts.

• 3:06Josh Clark?

  Yeah, well, they're very knee jerk, they're not very organized, and they're just emotionally driven. All boycotts have some level of emotion to them, driving them. But there's also supposed to be a lot more to them if you're going to make it successful.

• 3:21Speaker 02

  Yeah, and we're going to cover all that stuff.

• 3:23Josh Clark?

  But also, one more thing, Chuck. I am also not poo pooing anybody caring about something. That's great. I will always promote somebody caring about something that's important to you. And a lot of people show that they care by joining in on boycotts, or maybe even starting boycotts.

• 3:37Speaker 02

  Yeah, I mean, you're known as the guy who cares.

• 3:40Josh Clark?

  Who's been calling me that?

• 3:41Speaker 02

  The public at large, I think. That's your nickname on Reddit.

• 3:44Josh Clark?

  The boy who cares and the best all around boy.

• 3:48Speaker 02

  Oh, man. Look at that. Match made in heaven.

• 3:50Josh Clark?

  The barb. The BHC and the barb.

• 3:54Speaker 02

  I love it.

• 3:55Josh Clark?

  So let's start talking about boycotts because like I said, I was curious in how they worked. We asked David to help us with them. And what I didn't know, right out of the gate, is that boycott is somebody's last name. The first guy whoever on record got boycotted was named Charles Cunningham Boycott.

• 4:12Speaker 02

  Yeah, that seems like something we would make up as a bit.

• 4:16Josh Clark?

  Yeah.

• 4:16Speaker 02

  But it's actually totally true. He was an Englishman, uh, living in Ireland in County Mayo. And he was a rent collector specifically, uh, would collect rent for absentee British landlords from Irish tenant farmers who were having a very rough time in 1879.

• 4:34Josh Clark?

  Down on their luck, as you'd put it. They, there was a, um, terrible famine. This is after the Great Irish Potato Famine, but this one wasn't so wonderful either. And so these farmers were not exactly looking forward to being evicted for being behind on rent. And boycott apparently seems to be one of those people who had like, you just follow the rules. You're the one who's not paying your rent, so get out.

• 4:58Josh Clark?

  And the, the Irish people in County Mayo decided to do something about it. They formed an organization called the Land League and they were agitating for fair rents. They were agitating for an end to evictions and Charles Boycott just kept evicting people. So they're like, we've got to try something else. What can we do? Let's do everything we can to ruin Charles Boycott's life.

• 5:19Speaker 02

  Yeah. And if there was only a name for this kind of action.

• 5:23Josh Clark?

  They're like, we'll get to that later.

• 5:24Speaker 02

  Yeah, but we can't think of one. So, uh, later, in a letter to the Times of London, Boycott basically kind of summarized what they had been doing. And we're not going to read all this word for word, but you know, they, they really screwed with his business. He's, you know, they collected in crowds on his farm. They, you know, would harass him at his house. They threatened people that worked for him, like his blacksmith apparently got a letter threatening him with murder. If he did any more work for him, they threatened his laundress to stop washing his clothes. And he couldn't get anybody to do any kind of work for him, basically, and ruined his business. It became a big story, like not just there, but, um, kind of internationally, the British newspapers picked it up. The British newspapers also raised funds to send 50 Northern Irish loyalists.

• 6:11Speaker 02

  To harvest his potato crop because he couldn't get anyone to do it. Cause they were afraid they'd get, you know, physically beaten or harassed. And they were protected by British troops. And apparently by one account, it cost 10,000 pounds to harvest 500 pounds worth of potatoes. From those Northern Irish loyalists.

• 6:30Josh Clark?

  I did some conversions.

• 6:32Speaker 02

  Let's hear it.

• 6:32Josh Clark?

  So if they spent 10,000 pounds sterling to harvest these potatoes, they spent a million pounds sterling, or 1.4 million dollars in today's money to harvest 52,000 pounds sterling, or $70,000 worth of potatoes. Isn't that insane? That really just drives it home. That's why I do those conversions.

• 6:55Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 6:56Josh Clark?

  Cause I want to drive it home, how nuts that was.

• 6:59Speaker 02

  Totally nuts. He left Ireland boycott did in disgrace. It was a very successful challenge to his authority. Can't call it a boycott yet. But you could very soon because American journalist James Redpath said, you know what? The first person who used that as a verb was a local priest. Believe it or not, his name was Father O'Malley. Who said, I believe he suggested the land league try the same thing on another landlord named Brown. And he said, let's do what they did to boycott. Let's do a boycott on this Brown. That's what we're gonna do. We're going to boycott Brown. See, the word is a verb. It's boycott. You understand?

• 7:39Josh Clark?

  That was a great Father O'Malley.

• 7:41Speaker 02

  Thanks.

• 7:42Josh Clark?

  Yeah. And so just by covering Father O'Malley using it as a verb, writing about these new boycotts. James Redpath, who appears to have been a contemporary anious journalist to this time. He kind of helped generate this idea that you could actually get stuff done by boycotting people. Check this out. And so I think in the next year, there are more than a thousand boycotts in Ireland. Without social media.

• 8:13Speaker 02

  Yeah, there were a thousand boycotts. And that means Father O'Malley 100,000 times said, remember, it's called boycotting.

• 8:21Josh Clark?

  That's, that is so good. We're gonna get. Two emails from people who aren't even Irish that are mad at us for doing that.

• 8:29Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 8:30Josh Clark?

  And then 15 emails from people from Ireland who are like, that was hilarious, Chuck.

• 8:35Speaker 02

  Totally.

• 8:36Josh Clark?

  It's how it goes.

• 8:37Speaker 02

  Yeah, and maybe one from Father, eh, Father O'Malley, because I know there's a bunch of them still.

• 8:41Josh Clark?

  Yeah, I was gonna say, that doesn't narrow it down at all.

• 8:43Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 8:44Josh Clark?

  So, um, yeah, that's where the, that's where the whole boycott got started in County Mayo, Ireland. And since then, people have studied these things and have really kind of gotten down to almost a science, what it would take to make a boycott effective. And there have been a lot of effective boycotts over the years. We're gonna talk about some of them. But to just kind of pull apart the nuts and the bolts, there's just a handful of things that you really have to do just right. And then sprinkle it with a little bit of luck and you could have an effective boycott on your hands.

• 9:18Speaker 02

  I think you meant just a little bit of luck.

• 9:21Josh Clark?

  A little bit of leprechaun dust, right?

• 9:24Speaker 02

  Yeah, for sure. These are the one, two, three, four, five, six things you need to do. If you, you know, you can boycott your day away, but if you want to really be effective, these, there are at least, I'd say probably four out of six of these need to be around.

• 9:38Josh Clark?

  Yeah, six steps to ruining Target's market share.

• 9:42Speaker 02

  You gotta have a clear goal in mind, which means you, you have an outcome in mind, basically.

• 9:46Josh Clark?

  Mm-hmm.

• 9:47Speaker 02

  You want to narrow target, so you want to either target like a very narrow, like a product or just a single company.

• 9:53Josh Clark?

  Mm-hmm.

• 9:53Speaker 02

  That's why sometimes when I think about like, yeah, you're targeting this company, but like the parent company isn't targeted, I don't know, that's where it can get a little messy, I think.

• 10:02Josh Clark?

  Yeah, and poor Targets, like, can you guys stop using the word target when you're talking about boycotts?

• 10:09Speaker 02

  There's also awareness and education, because your, your goal here is to not only get them to change whatever they're doing, but to bring awareness and educate people in whatever you feel like they're doing wrong.

• 10:19Josh Clark?

  Well, plus also, the more support you have, the better off you are.

• 10:22Speaker 02

  Yeah, yeah, good point.

• 10:23Josh Clark?

  Uh, you also want to reach core customers. This is a very important point.

• 10:27Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 10:27Josh Clark?

  They turned up an expert in boycotts and studying boycotts who said, essentially, if you have a bunch of PETA members who are boycotting Kentucky Fried Chicken, like, that's not gonna have much of an effect, because none of those PETA members were ever buying Kentucky Fried Chicken in the first place. And yeah, maybe you could generate some public sympathy, but you're not getting to their core customers necessarily.

• 10:50Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 10:51Josh Clark?

  And that's what makes it effective. What else?

• 10:53Speaker 02

  Yeah. Uh, there's susta- uh, there's substitutability. This is a big one because,

• 10:59Speaker 02

  if you can very easily switch to another brand of whatever, then it's going to make your boycott far more effective. Like if, and you know, we'll get to other examples later, but like, you know, with the big Bud Light boycott was a very big one we're going to cover later. It was really easy for the people who wanted to boycott Bud Light to switch to another, like inexpensive light beer. So that, that was a pretty effective boycott because it's like super easy. Yeah, I'll just drink Miller Lite or whatever.

• 11:24Josh Clark?

  Right. Or I'll go to churches or Popeyes rather than Kentucky Fried Chicken.

• 11:28Speaker 02

  Exactly.

• 11:29Josh Clark?

  Uh, and then also like, if you want a, um, a successful boycott, you have to really like nail in that, that bottom line. You really gotta hurt the company financially. If you want to make them at least start listening to you, if not actually enact the change that you're looking for. And, you know, in times past, essentially pre-social media era, that was the one measure of boycotts. That is how you got a company to respond. You started really affecting either their sales or their stock price, more, more often than not their stock price. Nowadays, because of social media, bad press can spread so fast and so far and

• 12:11Josh Clark?

  so wide that just getting like negative press can actually make large corporations or organizations change their stance on something or make them drop their stance in, in total.

• 12:25Speaker 02

  Yeah, for sure. That's a very good point. It's a little bit different ballgame these days. Should we take our break?

• 12:30Josh Clark?

  Yeah.

• 12:31Speaker 02

  All right. We'll take a break. We'll be right back to, as promised, talk about some of the most famous boycotts throughout history.

• 12:54Josh Clark?

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• 16:29Speaker 02

  All right, we're back. And as promised, we're gonna take you on a little walk through the history of boycotts. And we gotta start with colonial era, because they were good at it. A lot of times, they were boycotting an act that was passed by the British that they did not like over here in the new colonies. They had some pretty wicked branding with slogans like, "No taxation without representation." They were pretty good at that kind of thing. And the first one we're gonna talk about is 1765. I know we've talked about all these kind of here and there in the life of the show, but the Stamp Act. Was passed in 65, which was a tax on paper goods and documents and things like that. And merchants in Boston and New York said, nope, we're going to sign a non-importation

• 17:14Speaker 02

  agreement and we're not going to import goods from England anymore. And it worked. About a year later, Parliament repealed the Stamp Act.

• 17:20Josh Clark?

  Yeah. First boycott in the, we should say the American colonies. I could see our Australian and New Zealand listeners.

• 17:26Speaker 02

  Good point.

• 17:27Josh Clark?

  I don't remember any of this, what you're talking about.

• 17:29Speaker 02

  Yeah, lots of colonies.

• 17:30Josh Clark?

  This happened in the American colonies, right?

• 17:33Speaker 02

  That's right.

• 17:33Josh Clark?

  Shortly after that, so Parliament's trying to pay for the Seven Years' War, the French Indian War is what the American colonists called it. So they were now directly taxing the American colonies and they followed up with the Stamp Act with the Towns and Revenue Act in 1767. It taxed a bunch of different stuff. The colonists organized a bunch of protests and boycotts again and Parliament responded and they repealed the Townsend Act three years later, but they kept one part of it. They kept a tax on tea. Everyone loved tea in the American colonies, as I'm sure in Australia and New Zealand too at the time. So it was a big deal to have this big tax on tea.

• 18:16Josh Clark?

  And so the American colonists said, well, we're not going to drink British tea. And Parliament said, oh yeah, well, get this. We're going to give the East India Company basically free rein on selling below cost for tea. So that even with this tax, it's going to cost you less for tea than buying the smuggled illegal tea that normally is cheaper with the tax, right? So some merchants were like, well, it sounds kind of good to me. I can make more money. And the people here in the American colonies, we call the patriots, the founding fathers, said nay to that. And that actually led to the Boston Tea Party.

• 18:54Speaker 02

  Yeah. The Sons of Liberty said, no thanks, we're going to dump your tea in the harbor.

• 18:59Josh Clark?

  Wow, man, you are killing it today, all over the place.

• 19:02Speaker 02

  And that's what they did. In 1774, the First Continental Congress passed a colony-wide ban on all trade with Britain, and that was the beginning of what would become a war.

• 19:14Josh Clark?

  Yeah, it worked then, it worked later. And I mean, they didn't have a name for this because this was before the county mayo boycotts and Charles boycott. But they were like, this unnamed thing that we're doing, it really kind of works. And so it inspired other, other groups that came along in America over the course of the coming centuries. Especially if you were part of a civil rights organization. Boycotts proved very effective. They are really worthwhile to do because most of the time, if you're agitating for civil rights, you have a, a group of true believers who are willing to actually work at this.

• 19:56Josh Clark?

  And one of the first groups fighting for civil rights in the United States were the Quakers, Quaker abolitionists, and they formed something called the Free Produce Movement.

• 20:06Speaker 02

  Yeah, this was in the 1840s through the Civil War, basically, and they boycotted goods made by enslaved people. Cotton, of course, being one of the keys there. And as far as they were concerned, like, hey, if you're, if you're buying this stuff, you're supporting slavery. So the Free Produce Movement movement sort of tackled that. Another obvious example as far as civil rights go is the great Montgomery Bus Boycott, which we covered in detail in our episode from February 2018, Rosa Parks, Colvin, Agent of Change. So you can go listen to that episode for the, the full rundown of the Montgomery Bus Boycott. But that was, a couple of highlights for me was the fact that before Rosa Parks came along, I always want a chance to shout out 15-year-old Claudette Colvin,

• 20:51Speaker 02

  who in March 1955 refused to move so a white passenger could take her seat. She was also yanked off the bus and arrested by the cops. But they would end up rallying around Rosa Parks instead about nine months later. And then the other thing I just wanted to highlight, and again, you should listen to that episode because it's really in-depth, but was that the black community rallied around each other in like a big way, like black taxi drivers would charge the same fare as the bus fare would be. They had volunteers organizing carpools. They had shoe drives because people were walking so much, they were wearing their shoes out to like get people in fresh shoes. And it's a really Beautiful moment in American history.

• 21:31Josh Clark?

  Yeah, and it was a real struggle for them because this is how black people in Montgomery largely got around was the bus. So to give that up was a big deal. And it was a successful boycott. It lasted 382 days until the Supreme Court ruled that segregation on buses was unconstitutional. If your boycott leads to a Supreme Court ruling that what you're fighting against is unconstitutional, that is a successful boycott.

• 21:57Speaker 02

  Yeah, for sure.

• 21:59Josh Clark?

  And then the one other thing about the Montgomery bus boycott is that it directly inspired another boycott a few years later that involved the United Farm Workers, grape growers, or grape harvesters, I should say, that was led by Cesar Chavez. And I mean, one of the things that he did that also makes boycotts successful that we talked about was educating the public. They created bumper stickers that said, "Uvas, no, no grapes." They told people what was going on and they got public support. That really helped, these boycotts really helped put the pressure on the grape growers to give the grape harvesters better working conditions.

• 22:36Speaker 02

  Can we talk about apartheid?

• 22:37Josh Clark?

  I think we should.

• 22:39Speaker 02

  So apartheid was segregation in South Africa. It was their version of legal segregation of their people, of the white minority and the black majority in South Africa. And it was around since 1948 through basically the mid 90s to when it finally dissolved, I think was like 94. And the repeal of apartheid is partially credited to international pressure, boycotts, sanctions, divestment.

• 23:09Josh Clark?

  And Little Stevie Van Zant.

• 23:11Speaker 02

  Yeah, and Little Stevie Van Zant. We'll get to him in a sec, but the nonviolent protests were a big part of it, led by the African National Congress. Nelson Mandela was one of the leaders in the ANC. So in 1959, ANC President Albert Luthuli said, "Hey, Great Britain, why don't you boycott all South American produce, all South African produce?" The first time they kind of reached out internationally for help like that. And so, South Africa said, you know what? We're outlawing the ANC and Nelson Mandela, you're going to jail.

• 23:43Josh Clark?

  Yeah, for, yeah, for suggesting a boycott, not even staging a boycott, but suggesting one. The UN got involved in 1962 and they were like, hey, guys, this is not okay. We all, or you guys need to start breaking ties with South Africa. And everybody said, nuts to that. And it took a bunch of different sports organizations to finally get the public aware of it. And hence getting governments involved in doing something about dismantling apartheid by turning their backs on South Africa. And the first sports organization to cut ties without South Africa in protest of its apartheid policies was the International Table Tennis Federation, who did so all the way back in 1956.

• 24:26Speaker 02

  Pretty great.

• 24:27Josh Clark?

  Yeah.

• 24:28Speaker 02

  I love that. In 64, the IOC Committee said, no South African teams can participate in the Olympics.

• 24:34Josh Clark?

  Yeah.

• 24:34Speaker 02

  And that was a ban that lasted from 64 to 92. So very longstanding. There were boycotts in Britain when South African cricket and rugby teams would tour there.

• 24:44Josh Clark?

  Yeah, there was a very famous battle for Swansea, I think, where there was like a rugby protest that the cops and some hooligans started beating up and it just became a huge thing and made international news too.

• 24:56Speaker 02

  Yeah, I mean, I remember all this stuff growing up in the eighties. It was all over the news. You couldn't like, you couldn't like go 10 minutes without hearing the word apartheid or anti-apartheid.

• 25:06Josh Clark?

  I mean, I knew the president of South Africa's name as like a 10-year-old because-

• 25:11Speaker 02

  What was it?

• 25:12Josh Clark?

  FW de Klerk?

• 25:14Speaker 02

  No, you're like, I knew it at 10. I don't know it now.

• 25:16Josh Clark?

  No, I'm almost positive that that's who it was.

• 25:18Speaker 02

  I remember de Klerk, yeah.

• 25:19Josh Clark?

  I learned about it from Mad Magazine.

• 25:22Speaker 02

  Of course. The eighties is also when you got college kids involved and that, you know, if you want to get college kids on your side, that's a pretty smart thing to do because they got nothing else to do except take like a couple of classes a day, maybe. And so they got together, started their activism on campus. And more than 150 US colleges divested from South Africa. So they withdrew investments in South African companies as institutions as a whole. There was a UN cultural boycott. And part of that ended up being something that started in 85 called The Artists United Against Apartheid, founded by Little Steven Van Zandt of the E Street Band.

• 26:05Speaker 02

  And a producer named Arthur Baker, who organized a song, Sun City, and an album, Sun City. Because Sun City was a luxury resort and casino in South Africa that had a lot of big time concerts. And the song basically was, I ain't gonna play Sun City. And it was a, you know, it was sort of on the heels of We Are The World. But this one was different because they, you know, there were certainly black artists on We Are The World, but not rap and hip hop. And Sun City had Bono, of course. And Bob Dylan and Ringo and Bruce, of course. Pat Benatar, George Clinton, Joey Ramone in a very weird appearance. Hall and Oates, but not together. They were very much separated.

• 26:47Josh Clark?

  That is so sad to me.

• 26:49Speaker 02

  Lou Reed also had a very funny appearance. Bonnie Raitt, but you also had Run DMC and Cool Mo D, The Fat Boys, DJ Cool Herc, Grandmaster Melly Mel, Jimmy Cliff was in there. So it really blended genres in a way that We Are The World did not. And it's a pretty good song, I think. Very 80s.

• 27:09Josh Clark?

  It's definitely worth seeing the video, for sure.

• 27:11Speaker 02

  Yeah, it's pretty cool. I think they ended up raising like a million bucks. So not a lot of money, but awareness is probably one of the biggest things. Because a lot of artists would not play Sun City, but artists did. Very famously, there's a list. The Beach Boys did, Cher did, Linda Ronstadt did, Sinatra did, Liza Minnelli, Rod Stewart, very disappointingly, Elton John, Queen and Dolly Parton all played Sun City.

• 27:34Josh Clark?

  And Dolly, oh, say you didn't so.

• 27:37Speaker 02

  It was fairly heartbreaking to read that.

• 27:39Josh Clark?

  Yeah, because this wasn't like a, oh, I hadn't heard kind of thing. This was like, I don't care enough. I'm gonna go to Sun City. They're paying me a bunch of money to go to this one. Concert date that I could easily cancel, you know?

• 27:53Speaker 02

  Yeah, agreed. Supposedly, I'm not even gonna say in their defense because I don't really know what they were thinking. But supposedly, they were told by the people at Sun City, like, hey, there's an exception for us and we can actually have a segregated audience. So like, you should come play. So I don't know if that's the guys they did in under or not. That's the list.

• 28:09Josh Clark?

  Yeah. So, um, yeah, so this is a big deal, like sports, entertainment. That's a really good way to get your boycott spread far and wide. Because that's what the average person is paying attention to more than like the news or foreign policy. They're like, wait a minute, why is Cool Mo D not going to South Africa? I should probably look into that. And so, um, when you get people into it, things actually happen, right? There is a, uh, the US Congress passed the Comprehensive Anti-Apartheid Act. And it was one of the more punitive sanctions packages that America has ever dealt against any country. And Ronald Reagan even vetoed it.

• 28:51Josh Clark?

  And Congress overrode his veto. It was the first time in 13 years that Congress had overridden a presidential veto. And they said, no, this is getting passed. And so it did get passed. And, you know, you might be like, wow, that was brave and assertive of Congress. They must really have cared about dismantling apartheid. And I'm sure some of them did, but I think what it says more than anything is just how far and wide America was anti-apartheid by this time. That Congress is like, we're gonna override a presidential veto of the most popular president America's had in recent history. Because all of our constituents are like, go do that.

• 29:29Speaker 02

  Yeah, because they read about Cool Mo D and they wouldn't have it.

• 29:32Josh Clark?

  Yep.

• 29:33Speaker 02

  Yeah, and you know, a lot of times when the US does something, the world follows, back then at least. And once the US put their sanctions in place, other countries came aboard in Europe and Asia. And a lot of economic pressure was put on South Africa. And Mandela was eventually, the Berlin Wall fell in 89, which basically said, South Africa is not like a protection against communism in Africa now. No need for that. Mandela was freed in 90 and then over the next four years, it was kind of little by little dismantled. I think finally in 94 was when it was officially over.

• 30:05Josh Clark?

  So that was successful, I would say for sure. There was another one that was pretty successful. That was much more recent. Back in 2016, in North Carolina, they passed the Public Facilities Privacy and Security Act, much more well-known as the bathroom bill, which basically said that in North Carolina, you have to use a public restroom for the sex that you were assigned at birth. So essentially it was like trans people, you can't use public restrooms that you identify with. People called it mean spirited, evil. It was anti-trans. It was an attack on a group of people and it really, it kind of took off. It became one of the first really viral boycotts on social media. Back in 2016, it had a huge effect.

• 30:49Speaker 02

  Yeah. And this was one where hitting in the wallet was a big deal because corporations got involved. PayPal canceled plans to build an office in Charlotte. You know, entertainers got involved, of course. Springsteen, as always, the boss wouldn't play in Sun City or Greensboro.

• 31:05Josh Clark?

  Ain't gonna play Greensboro.

• 31:06Speaker 02

  And then, of course, a lot of other bands said, what the boss does, we follow. Movie studios pulled out, which hit them in the financial pocketbook, of course. Said, we're not going to shoot there. Sports again gets involved. The NCAA moved several different college championships out of North Carolina. The NBA threatened to pull the All-Star Weekend out of Charlotte.

• 31:26Josh Clark?

  They followed through too. They moved it to New Orleans that year.

• 31:29Speaker 02

  Yeah. So all this told cost the state of North Carolina $3.76 billion in the year that that bill was around. They repealed it in 2017.

• 31:39Josh Clark?

  Man, that's crazy. That's a lot of money to lose in just a year, Chuck.

• 31:43Speaker 02

  And that's why it was effective.

• 31:45Josh Clark?

  So you want to take a break and come back and talk about whether social media boycotts are effective?

• 31:51Speaker 02

  Let's do it.

• 32:07Josh Clark?

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• 33:09Josh Clark?

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• 33:25Speaker 02

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• 33:38Josh Clark?

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• 33:52Speaker 02

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• 34:19Josh Clark?

  You know, eating is a huge part of our lives. It fuels us, it brings us together, and it's one of life's great pleasures. But once a meal's over, we don't think much about what happens next unless something starts to feel off, because what we eat and how our bodies respond to it is complicated.

• 34:34Speaker 02

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• 35:03Josh Clark?

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• 35:38Josh Clark?

  Okay, so we're back, and we have entered a brand new age of boycotts. And thanks to social media, it is really easy to start a boycott, for a boycott to go viral, and then for the news to report on boycotts and how they did. It's almost like a spectator sport to a certain extent. Oh, here's this new boycott. How'd it do two months on? I saw an article on Newsweek, and the title was, "Here Are the Corporations Being Boycotted in June." It's just become that, like, pedestrian.

• 36:07Speaker 02

  Yeah, I mean, we should read this one stat. There's one study that found that 54% of top brands, more than half have been boycotted, and 42% of multinational corporations, and we're not saying like, poor multinational corporations, but just sort of driving home the point, like you were saying, that, I mean, you said, you know, two months later, we'll see how it's doing. Two months later, people might be like, oh, are we boycotting that?

• 36:32Josh Clark?

  Still, I thought that was done. I thought we'd moved on.

• 36:34Speaker 02

  Which is kind of the, one of the problems with the social media boycotts.

• 36:37Josh Clark?

  It is, because with social media, I mean, by definition, it's, your attention span is just careening from place to place constantly. It's really hard to stop and focus, and that's a big thing that, that boycotts require, is focus, dedication, organization, growth.

• 36:54Speaker 02

  Business.

• 36:54Josh Clark?

  When, you know, two, yeah, when three quarters of the people who were boycotting with you the first week moved on to something else, your boycott's hurting, right? But that is not to say that boycotts starting on social media aren't effective. And there's a couple in very recent memory that you can use to show how, what's effective and what isn't effective, because that's what people like to do with boycotts these days. Talk about that.

• 37:22Speaker 02

  Yeah, and we should also point out, you're going to hear another word in describing these things, it's the word boycott, and that is the counter to boycott when, because most of these are, are political in nature, obviously, hot button issues and evenly sort of divided, because the United States is pretty much evenly divided at this point politically.

• 37:39Josh Clark?

  Down to a guy named Eugene, who votes twice, for one for each party, just to be fair. That's how divided America is.

• 37:49Speaker 02

  Yeah, so when there is a boycott, there is also generally a boycott when the other part of the country says, oh, yeah, well, I'm going to buy that thing because you don't want to buy that thing.

• 37:57Josh Clark?

  Right.

• 37:58Speaker 02

  Because we like what they're saying. So, Goya is a very popular Hispanic food brand here in the US. Great black beans. I love those Goya black beans.

• 38:06Josh Clark?

  Y muchas gracias a Goya.

• 38:08Speaker 02

  That's right. In 2020, it was big news when the CEO of Goya attended an event at the White House and was praising Donald Trump, and a lot of people got upset about that, and Democratic Representative Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez said, hey, we need to boycott Goya. And it turns out that that didn't work so well because it didn't hit enough of those things that you need to do to have a successful boycott.

• 38:34Josh Clark?

  And also because AOC is a boycott magnet.

• 38:37Speaker 02

  For sure.

• 38:38Josh Clark?

  So there were a couple of things. So there was a, the boycott sparked a boycott among conservatives. Because in the United States, for those of you who don't live here, when you choose a side on a boycott, you're defending your political beliefs. That's just how they work here. I'm not sure if it's like that the rest of the world around, but that is definitely how they work here. And the reasons that Goya wasn't successful as a boycott was because there were a lot of people, Latin Hispanic households, who did not have a dog in that fight, who did not choose sides, who were not like, what are you talking about? We buy Goya products. Like, this doesn't make any sense. And then a lot of those households also are conservatives too. So they probably would have

• 39:22Josh Clark?

  bought Goya products had they not been buying them already, just to show their support.

• 39:27Speaker 02

  Yeah, and the boycott that it triggered, apparently, Goya got a 22% bump in sales because of that boycott, but it did not last long because, like you said, a lot of those people who were like, yeah, I'm gonna start buying Goya stuff because this guy praised Donald Trump, they weren't Goya customers before. So maybe sometimes you get someone from a boycott that's like, hey, these black beans are dynamite. That's my brand from now on. But in this case, it was a quick bump in sales and then they were like, nope, back to old El Paso. And the sales kind of leveled out.

• 40:01Josh Clark?

  Yes. That's actually, if you flip-flop the political spectrum, the same thing happened in Nike not too many years ago, when they supported Colin Kaepernick while he was taking a knee during the National Anthem. And there was a huge backlash on social media against Nike for supporting him. There, people were burning their Nikes and making videos of it and posting it on social media, but it spurred a boycott to support Nike. And Nike made out like bandits for that. They had what analysts suspect was an additional $6 billion in sale in a handful of weeks following the boycott. The call for the boycott, the boycott,

• 40:45Josh Clark?

  gave them that much extra money. The support came out for them like that.

• 40:50Speaker 02

  And that's right. Then the NFL got back at Colin Kaepernick by essentially blackballing him.

• 40:54Josh Clark?

  Yeah.

• 40:55Speaker 02

  So we should probably mention Bud Light because we mentioned it earlier. That was another very recent one. In 2023, transgender influencer Dylan Mulvaney had a TikTok video announcing a contest sponsored by Bud Light. And in that video, had the nerve to show a can of Bud Light that the company sent her with an image of her face on it. And that was it. The conservative right got up in arms and they said Bud Light is dead to us. Go woke, go broke. And in the three months following that post, Bud Light's sales went down 28% compared to the same period in prior years. And the damage was worse in Republican leaning districts. I think 32% compared to 22% in Democrat districts.

• 41:38Josh Clark?

  Yeah, but ultimately, overall, eight months after the initial boycott, they were down 32% overall in sales.

• 41:46Speaker 02

  Yeah. So I mean, it was a successful boycott by all accounts.

• 41:49Josh Clark?

  Man, they weren't berserk about that. It was a big deal here in the US that Bud Light. So just to be clear, they sent Dylan Mulvaney one can with Dylan Mulvaney's face on it. This was not for sale or anything like that.

• 42:04Speaker 02

  Yeah, yeah.

• 42:05Josh Clark?

  But that was all it took. And yeah, Bud Light just took a beating. They were the number one selling beer. I don't even think just light beer. I think beer in the United States. And they dropped down.

• 42:16Speaker 02

  It's a disgrace.

• 42:16Josh Clark?

  They dropped down to third in just a few weeks, right? The reason why, there are a few reasons why. Substitutability. You could easily just switch to Coors Light, Miller's Light, and your taste buds would have no idea that you'd switched. But apparently, a lot of people switched to Modelo Especial, which we'll get to in a second. And then also, and this explains why Bud Light did this, because in retrospect, you're like, that was one of the more tone deaf things a brand has ever done. But it turns out Bud Light's customer base is pretty evenly divided along the political spectrum. So I think they just thought like they were doing what they do and were clearly not expecting that kind of backlash.

• 42:58Josh Clark?

  Companies in that situation are much more vulnerable to a backlash when they take any kind of political stance or social stance.

• 43:07Speaker 02

  Yeah, like when it's a pretty even split on who likes your product.

• 43:11Josh Clark?

  Exactly.

• 43:11Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 43:12Josh Clark?

  Because I mean, if it were all like, if Bud Light's entire customer base were LGBTQ, if they had Dylan Mulvaney be like a brand ambassador, it would not matter at all. But because half of their people probably have unflattering views on trans people. Yes, it really put a hurting on them. And then the last one was observability is what they call it.

• 43:33Speaker 02

  Yeah, sometimes you consume a product in private, like the black beans you're eating.

• 43:38Josh Clark?

  Right out of the can?

• 43:40Speaker 02

  Yeah, you're not just walking around eating a can of black beans in public. But other stuff, you know, it's a little more visible and like, you know, tailgating and being out in public with a beer, being in a bar with a beer. It's a much more public product that you're consuming. And researchers found that even if you were liberal and you were a beer drinker, you might have avoided drinking Bud Light in public just because of the controversy over it.

• 44:00Josh Clark?

  One of the big, there's an ironic twist, I guess, to this whole thing. I said that Modelo Especial became, I think, the number one selling beer after Bud Light dropped off. In the couple of weeks after the boycott started against Bud Light, Modelo's sales went up $36 million more than Bud Light's sales.

• 44:20Speaker 02

  Yeah, that's amazing.

• 44:22Josh Clark?

  Yeah, so Modelo is like, this is great. The thing is, is Modelo and Bud Light are both owned and distributed by the same companies. So it was like robbing Peter to pay Paul, or a Twitter user put it, I think I found this on Vox, maybe, in an article by Stephanie Grob Plante. It was like boycotting the Big Mac by eating a quarter pounder instead.

• 44:44Speaker 02

  Yeah, and that's kind of like what I was talking about earlier with just, I think boycotts are just not thought through as much these days because, I don't know, there's so many mega companies that own all these smaller things. You really got to do your homework to figure out like, wait a minute, I can't switch to this thing because they're also owned by that thing.

• 45:03Josh Clark?

  Yeah, I think though, that one's not the most slam dunk ironic twist there is because I think even if they knew that it was the same general company, Anheuser-Busch, the ire was directed at Bud Light. They wanted to punish Bud Light, the brand specifically.

• 45:20Speaker 02

  Yeah, yeah.

• 45:21Josh Clark?

  And they were definitely successful with that.

• 45:24Speaker 02

  Yeah, good point.

• 45:25Josh Clark?

  So Chuck, there's a couple of things. I think we should wrap it up by talking about like, whether these things are worth doing, whether companies should take a social stance. Let's do that, shall we?

• 45:36Speaker 02

  Yeah, I mean, first of all, we mentioned earlier that it doesn't necessarily have to be the big financial hit to cause a problem these days. Just the, the bad press and the negative press can hurt a company's reputation. That could potentially hurt a stock price, but I mean, really, the only thing that's going to damage the stock price are, are bad sales. So at the end of the day, it kind of is money. They can probably withstand, uh, bad press, but they don't love it.

• 46:02Josh Clark?

  No, but if you can turn the markets on the company, that's a big deal.

• 46:06Speaker 02

  Yeah, for sure. As far as whether people think companies should get involved with this, it depends on who you ask. There was a, a survey, I think from 2017, is that right?

• 46:17Josh Clark?

  Mm-hmm.

• 46:18Speaker 02

  Yeah, not too long ago. It's found that 90% of American consumers expect companies to take an active role in addressing, uh, social concerns. Um, there was a different survey that found that 63% of millennials and 60% of Gen Xers, uh, think companies have a more important role than governments do in driving social change. So those are pretty disparate numbers.

• 46:38Josh Clark?

  Right, and people who advise companies, like there's a, an entire industry on advising companies on stuff like this. They say it, it comes down to the company culture. Do you stand for things? Is, are you the kind of company that would ever stand for anything? Or are you just trying to sell duck boots, you know?

• 46:53Speaker 02

  Right.

• 46:54Josh Clark?

  You have to ask yourself these kinds of things. Do you want to change to be a different kind of company? Who knows? But what, one of the things that they find is that it is often worse to take a stand and then change your stance than to take no stance at all.

• 47:08Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 47:09Josh Clark?

  Like targets wishy-washy stance on DEI policies, right? Or apparently another big one is companies will celebrate Pride Month in a country that's, that where Pride Month is much more acceptable, uh, than they, and then just not celebrate it in other countries where there is Pride Month, but it's not quite as accepted as it is in the other countries. So having like a wishy-washy stance on stuff, that can really damage your company's image because of, you basically are telling the world like, we don't really actually have any values. We don't really care about anything social. We're just trying to make money here. So even if you are a company that chooses to take a stance, you really need to stick with it and just stick with it, ride it out, or else just don't do it at all.

• 47:54Josh Clark?

  But don't make it, take a stand and then backpedal.

• 47:58Speaker 02

  Josh's advice to corporate America.

• 48:00Josh Clark?

  Right. And then on the other side, if you're just an everyday person and you want to take part in a boycott, I think one of the issues Chuck that we kind of were hinting around throughout this episode is that a problem is that you can become complacent. Like you're doing enough by liking a tweet and then not buying Kellogg's cereal for a week and calling it a day. You feel like you're doing your part when you're really not doing much and there's a lot more work to be done. That's kind of a big danger of it for sure.

• 48:32Speaker 02

  I gotta tell you, friend, I'm very relieved because a few minutes ago, I thought you were about to say something about LL Bean.

• 48:39Josh Clark?

  Nope.

• 48:41Speaker 02

  When you mentioned duck boots, I was like, oh no, don't tell me. I gotta get rid of my duck boots.

• 48:46Josh Clark?

  Yeah, I've got mine too. Luckily, there are other brands that make duck boots, but not like LL Bean's.

• 48:52Speaker 02

  No, are there though?

• 48:53Josh Clark?

  Sure. I've got some Sperry's that are pretty good.

• 48:56Speaker 02

  Oh, yeah. Okay. I like Sperry's.

• 48:59Josh Clark?

  So there you go. And then lastly Chuck, I actually corresponded with a professor at Melbourne Business School in Melbourne, Victoria, Australia.

• 49:09Speaker 02

  What?

• 49:09Josh Clark?

  Yeah. And I did that with Jill Klein. I found an article called Why We Boycott: Consumer Motivations for Boycott Participation. And it's from all the way back in 2004, but I asked her like, okay, is this, does this still apply? And she said, yes, because these four motivators that the study turned up were based on basic psychological processes that are unlikely to change in 20 years. That's what she said, right? So they found four motivators that are the better predictors of whether somebody takes part in a boycott. Do you want to hear them or should we just end the episode here?

• 49:44Speaker 02

  Hey, that's up to you, bud.

• 49:45Josh Clark?

  I'll go forward with them. One is egregiousness. That is how badly a company behaved or how bad the thing that the company is supporting is. Efficacy, so the person's judgment on whether the boycott's going to make any difference whatsoever. Self enhancement is one. Is it going to make them look good? Is it going to make them feel good about themselves for doing it? And then estimated participation of others. So the more people you have joining in, the more the person is likely to join in, which I call the Cool Mo D effect.

• 50:16Speaker 02

  It's a good thing they got here because I know for a fact she rolled that up, put it in a bottle, corked it, and threw it in the ocean.

• 50:21Josh Clark?

  I couldn't believe how fast that current carried it here in like 12 hours.

• 50:26Speaker 02

  Pretty impressive.

• 50:26Josh Clark?

  Pretty impressive. So, thanks a lot, Dr. Jill Klein of Melbourne Business School, and her co-author Andrew John, who also weighed in on the email.

• 50:37Speaker 02

  I love it.

• 50:37Josh Clark?

  Thanks to everybody who helped us out with this, including Dave, and thank you for listening to this episode. And since I just thanked everybody, it's time for listener mail.

• 50:50Speaker 02

  This is from a guy in Athens, and this is about our styrofoam. "Hey, guys. Longtime listener. I run a business over near Athens where we, Athens, Georgia, that is, where we recycle 90% to 95% of our waste. We're primarily a candle company, but also have a quaint retail store in downtown Monroe where we make our own products. When I started the business, I wanted ethical sourcing, sustainability, and health to be our pillars of guidance. We source all of our materials from sustainable or recycled sources, but we also have a huge recycling program where customers can bring back their cleaned-out old containers to be exchanged for discounts on new products."

• 51:25Josh Clark?

  That's awesome, because those things are hard to clean out.

• 51:27Speaker 02

  Yeah, totally. So, he's been going to Charm. They have one in Athens, because we mentioned Charm, the great recycling center for hard-to-recycle materials here in Atlanta that Emily is dedicated to. And they've been going to Charm for years, and he said, "Since I know the industry lacks some transparency, I've decided to ask one of the folks what they do with low-density plastic and styrofoam that I drop off, since I heard those things typically have a low conversion rate into new material. And to answer your pondering question from the episode about styrofoam, the rep told me they sell it to a company that actually turns it into synthetic decking material, which I thought was pretty neat."

• 52:01Josh Clark?

  Yeah.

• 52:03Speaker 02

  I love that. And thanks for all you do and for being a good model of healthy friendship. Hey, hey, how about that?

• 52:08Josh Clark?

  What a great way to put it.

• 52:09Speaker 02

  And that is from Matt at the Rekindle Candle Company. And you can just look online. This sounds like great stuff with a great core mission. So, just check out the Rekindle Candle Company online from Athens, Georgia, and buy their stuff.

• 52:22Josh Clark?

  That name is adorable, Matt.

• 52:24Speaker 02

  I love it.

• 52:25Josh Clark?

  Yeah. Thanks a lot for that email. Thanks a lot for what you're doing up there. I'm going to go check out Rekindle Candle Company, either online or in person. Who knows? And if you want to be like Matt and send us a great email, you can do so. Wrap it up, spank it on the bottom, and send it off to [email protected].

• 52:46Speaker 00

  Stuff You Should Know is a production of iHeartRadio. For more podcasts, iHeartRadio, visit the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you listen to your favorite shows.

• 53:01Josh Clark?

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• 53:32Speaker 03

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• 54:05Speaker 00

  This is an iHeart Podcast. Guaranteed Human.