But Warner officials have had the last laugh, it seems: Billboard magazine figures that Ice-T’s “Body Count” album, which includes the incendiary rap tune, has soared on the charts in the past week. Time Warner’s Jeanette Lerman says the company has no plans to pull the album from the shelves. “We stand for encouraging the exchange of ideas and information,” she says. “In order to accomplish that, we have to support artistic freedom.”
If Time Warner is taking a rap from boycotters, so is the rest of corporate America. About 100 such campaigns are underway nationwide, and their list of targets reads like a subset of the Fortune 500: General Electric (maker of nuclear weapons), Anheuser-Busch (keeper of whales in captivity) and Coca-Cola (investor in South Africa), among others. Most don’t pose real threats to the bottom line. But that may be dumb luck; few corporations seem to have mastered the art of dealing with them. Todd Putnam, editor of the National Boycott News, says companies are often uncertain about when they should fight a boycott and when they should simply give in. “They’re trying to sort out what works.”
Americans have been staging boycotts ever since the colonists dumped their first load of tea. But the recent wave began in 1989, after the Exxon Valdez spilled 11 million gallons of oil into Alaskan waters, spurring grass-roots protests. The Exxon incident paved the way for a boycott that helped persuade H.J. Heinz to stop purchasing tuna caught using fishing techniques that harm dolphins. “People discovered empowerment in their pockets and purses,” says Putnam. “That, in turn, spawned an increased interest in social and environmental problems.”
Today’s boycotters have adopted a more ruthless battle plan than their predecessors had. They don’t always care if consumers stop buying products. Instead, they rely on tactics that could have been borrowed from political mudslingers. When the national peace organization Neighbor to Neighbor wanted to protest Folgers’ use of Salvadoran coffee in 1990, for example, it ran a commercial featuring coffee cups oozing with blood. The message: Folgers was “brewing misery and death” by using beans from a country torn by death squads. In the same manner, protesters knocked Nestle’s disputed infant-formula policy by labeling executives as “babymilk pushers” (chart).
Do the guerrilla tactics really work? “It depends on how organized [the boycotters] are, how many groups are involved and what the issue is,” says Amy Binder, president of Ruder Finn public relations and a consultant to boycotted companies. While boycotters persuaded Campbell’s Soup Co. to recognize the tomato workers’ union, for example, they have had little significant impact on tobacco companies like Philip Morris. But even if the results aren’t monetary, boycotters often capture the kind of headlines that no amount of advertising or promotional dollars can buy.
Just ask General Electric Corp. This spring, a documentary film protesting the company’s role in manufacturing nuclear weapons won an Academy Award. In accepting the prize, filmmaker Debra Chasnoff implored the audience to “boycott GE,” spreading her protest message to some 1 billion viewers around the world. The activist group INFACT, which initiated the GE boycott, says such actions have cost GE more than $43 million in lost sales during the past 6 years. Company officials seem loath to discuss the incident or its effect on the company, but they steadfastly deny that the boycott has turned away business. “The boycott has had no discernible effect whatsoever,” GE spokesman Ford Slater tersely told a NEWSWEEK reporter last week. Then he terminated the call.
Many corporations develop aggressive public-relations campaigns to deal with boycotters. When a group called Action for Corporate Accountability decided in 1988 to renew its earlier boycott against Nestle’s infant formula, the public-relations agency Ogilvy & Mather drew up a battle plan for Nestle code-named Proactive Neutralization. It called, among other tactics, for Nestle to show its support for children by sponsoring Whittle Communications’ Channel One programming in schools. After press reports, Nestle’s denied it had commissioned the plan.
In some cases, companies have found that the most pragmatic response is simply to cave in. When protesters began showering Pizzeria Uno’s locations with leaflets criticizing its use of Salvadoran coffee, the pizza chain quickly decided to drop Procter & Gamble’s Folgers brand from its restaurants. To make sure other chains didn’t follow suit, P&G later offered Pizza Hut, one of its largest customers, a coffee blend with the Folgers flavor profile, but made without beans from El Salvador and without the Folgers label. After news of the offer hit the press, however, P&G promptly denied having offered the special blend. “Simply put, we are not going to produce ‘boycott coffee’ for anybody,” P&G chief Ed Artzt said at the time.
Even a company trying to be a good corporate citizen is not immune to confrontation. Last spring, Iowa-based Pioneer Hi-Bred International Inc. decided to withdraw its annual gift to Planned Parenthood after protesters threatened sanctions. Such waffling can backfire. Dayton Hudson department stores flip-flopped on a decision to support Planned Parenthood and came under fire from both advocates and opponents of abortion rights.
Given the sensitive nature of boycotts, have companies found any textbook ways of responding to them? Experts advise companies to make a reasonable assessment of the damage a boycott can do. Studies show that only 18 percent of Americans participate in boycotts, but those who do are often big-spending customers, with college diplomas and high incomes. They are the last group a company wants to alienate. Boycotted companies should also keep in mind the nature of their enterprise. For example, Time Warner’s decision to keep “Cop Killer” on the market was appropriate for a company that trades on freedom of expression, says Edelman public-relations vice president Josh Baran, a crisis-management expert. For another organization, standing behind free speech may not have been so vital.
More and more, however, companies are finding that the best approach to boycotts is mediation. Such was the case in 1990 at McDonald’s Corp., which ironed out its problems with the Environmental Defense Fund by setting up a joint task force. At first, the venture seemed risky for both sides. “We were afraid that we would appear to be selling out,” says John Ruston, an economic analyst for the fund. “And they saw it as letting the camel in under their tent.” The results, however, have been impressive. Last year McDonald’s agreed to test a composting program, replace its polystyrene containers and convert from bleached paper to plain brown bags. But the burger company is still not out of the frying pan. Animal-rights groups continue to boycott the restaurant company for its failure to offer vegetarian sandwiches. Which only goes to show: you can please some of the boycotters, but only some of the time.
Few firms have mare experience with boycotts than Nestle. The company first came under fire in 1977 for distributing free infant formula to Third World countries. The boycotters maintained that poor women become dependent on the pricey liquid, which they are often forced to mix with polluted water. In 1988, the boycott was renewed when a watchdog group said the company had ceased to comply with World Health Organization guidelines. While it denies any wrongdoing, Nestle appears to be waving the white flag. It has promised to support UNICEF’S “Baby-Friendly Hospital Initiative,” designed to end the distribution of free and low-cost baby formula by the end of 1992.
Procter & Gamble is a boycott veteran. During the 1980s, in one of the most bizarre controversies in American business, the company was besieged by rumors that its familiar moon-and-stars logo was a satanic symbol. The problem eventually subsided after P&G redesigned the symbol. But the company later came under fire for its use of Salvadoran beans in Folgers brand coffee. Procter & Gamble’s problems aren’t over yet. The organization is currently being boycotted for its use of animals in the testing of household products.
The documentary “Deadly Deception” won an Academy Award this spring–and created headaches for General Electric. The company is the target of a boycott by Boston-based INFACT, which says GE’s production of nuclear weapons has enormous social costs. The group says its protests have caused hospitals to boycott GE’s high-tech medical equipment, costing the company millions. GE officials, who say the company shouldn’t be responsible for defense policy, says the claims are hokum.
In 1990, after protesters forced Dayton Hudson to discontinue its annual $18,000 Planned Parenthood grant, the department-store chain, which also owns Target stores, discovered that it could please no one. Pro-choice activists thought the company was knuckling under to pressure from the anti-abortion movement, and mounted a high-profile boycott. They urged supporters to cut their charge cards in two and return the “Santa Bears” the company gave for Christmas. Within a few weeks the company reversed its decision again.
For a time there, McDonald’s couldn’t get a break. The company was the target of animal-rights advocates, environmentalists and the National Heart Savers Association, a group dedicated to eliminating excess animal tat from the diet. McDonald’s appeased one big detractor, the Environmental Defense Fund, by recycling and using paper products.
