2020 : The Year of Boycotts
The year 2020 will always be known as the year of Pandemic. However, the backdrop of COVID-19 also saw many pertinent social issues come to the light. These issues had a consistent impact across the ecosystems, leading to stands being taken by people and companies alike.
Mobilization against governments, oppressions, organizations were openly sprinkled across this year, and we are just in July. Accountability is the flavor of the season, and many companies and CEOs alike were brought to the spotlight due to their political or social stance. Even countries saw major turmoil in terms of limiting or demanding transparency.
Let’s look at the stands that moved through the ecosystem right from the controversy to the fall out to the reckoning.
Advertising Wars with Facebook
The Controversy
A boycott of advertisers on social media has gained substantial momentum, and Facebook is the primary target. Marketers are expressing unease with how it handles misinformation and hate speech, including its permissive approach to problematic posts by influential political figures. The boycotts have followed a call by the advocacy group Stop Hate for Profit, which is keeping a running list of participating companies. This has been listed as the largest flare-up in a long-simmering battle between advertisers and social platforms over who gets to control what content the ads pop up next to. The campaign was triggered by Facebook allowing content that organizers said could incite violence against protesters, representing the most substantive effort to date to sanction the social network, which commands the second-largest share of the U.S. digital ad market behind Google.
The Impact
As a result, many major companies paused their advertising on all social media platforms. The biggest spenders on Facebook ads such as Starbucks with $95 million and Diageo with $23 million on the platform last year have joined the bandwagon, along with Honda America, Levi Strauss, and Patagonia. Now, more than 400 companies, from Coca-Cola and Adidas to Ford and Lego, have vowed to halt advertising on the social network, in a growing protest over how it handles hate speech and other harmful content.
“Facebook has given [advertisers] no other option because of their failure, time and time again, to address the very real and the very visible problems on their platform,” shared Rashad Robinson, president of the civil rights group Color of Change with NPR. The campaign aims at Facebook’s advertising juggernaut, which accounted for more than 98% of the company’s nearly $70 billion in revenue last year. The stated goal: “to force [CEO] Mark Zuckerberg to address the effect that Facebook has had on our society.” And it has caught Zuckerberg’s attention. He has agreed to meet with the groups behind Stop Hate for Profit, Facebook released an official statement shortly after. Furthermore, Facebook has spent the past few days in round-the-clock conversations with advertisers, trying to persuade them to come back to the platform with the promise of modest changes to address concerns that the social network profits from hate and outrage.
The Chinese Controversy
The Controversy
Whether it was a pandemic or the ongoing debate associated with exports and imports followed by trade deficits of India, or the cross border volatility, “Boycotting Chinese Products” has been one of the most active topical debates, globally. Since President Donald Trump took office in 2017, his approach to U.S.-China relations has also included increased pressure via tariffs and trade war rhetoric, and now, with the onset of an unprecedented pandemic, the stage has been set for both sides to cast aspersions on the other. The Chinese goods, services, and investments have entered the market and have pushed the numbers to a place where a country where 80% of the population owns just 14.6% of the entire wealth.
The Impact
India’s government took its strongest retaliatory measure yet against China, banning 59, mostly Chinese-owned apps from GooglePlay and Apple App stores in India. Discretionary consumer boycotts and app bans while are arguably easy initial targets in India’s rift with China. Efforts by India to further decouple from China will prove more challenging. From pharmaceutical supply chains to tech industry funding, India’s economy depends heavily on China, and it’s a largely one-sided relationship that gives Beijing an upper hand.
Similarly, as the economies of both China and the United States struggle with the impact of the current pandemic, there is a constant back and forth when it comes to the political or economic stand between the two countries. Right from claims to boycott chinese applications to signing trade deals and setting up new stores for its major conglomerates , the stand when it comes to these two so-called economic powerhouses remains unclear.
The CrossFit Cross
The Controversy
The fittest athletes in the world are boycotting CrossFit following an insensitive comment made by the company’s CEO after the death of George Floyd. CrossFit had also been facing criticism for staying silent on the issue of systemic racism, and failing to publicly post any support for the Black Lives Matter movement. When put in spot, Greg Glassman resisted the pressure, calling an affiliate gym owner “delusional” in an email for her suggestion. Then, when the Institute for Health Metrics and Evaluation tweeted that racism is a “public health issue,” Glassman replied, “It’s Floyd-19,” apparently comparing the death of George Floyd to the coronavirus.
The Impact
The fallout from the tweet and widely circulated email were swift. More than 1,000 gyms pledged to stop using the CrossFit name, the sport’s top athletes took to their social media handles to talk about boycotting the CrossFit Games and companies such as Reebok and Rogue Fitness also decided to stop doing business with the company. Hammer estimated the controversy could cost CrossFit hundreds of millions of dollars in lost revenue. Greg Glassman, the outspoken founder and CEO of CrossFit, resigned days after he made inflammatory remarks about the nationwide protests in support of Black Lives Matter. Athletes, gyms, Reebok, and other athletic companies have been distancing themselves from the CrossFit brand over the controversy.
The Goya Food Funk
The Controversy
When Goya Foods CEO Robert Unanue stood beside President Trump in the Rose Garden, remembered his grandfather, and said “We’re all truly blessed at the same time to have a leader like President Trump who is a builder, and that’s what my grandfather did,” little did he know that he had kick-started a revolution against the corporation that bills itself as America’s largest Hispanic-owned food company food brand. Unaune’s endorsement of the President upset many Hispanics as the brand largely caters to them and Trump has often targeted the community. Apart from his immigration policies and his attempt to build a border wall with Mexico, Trump in 2016 called Mexicans “rapists”. Those boycotting Goya products have started sharing alternative brands and recipes with hashtags such as #BoycottGoya and #Goyaway.
The Impact
What was intended to be celebratory comments marking Trump’s signing of an executive order that pledges to improve Hispanic Americans’ access to educational and economic opportunities instead fueled a firestorm of backlash targeting Unanue and Goya that culminated in widespread calls to boycott the popular brand? The Boycott since then has been seen, Unanue defended himself during a Friday morning appearance on Fox News, decrying the boycott as “suppression of speech.” He also questioned why his past praise of former President Barack Obama went unchallenged, but Thursday’s remarks about Trump prompted such swift criticism.”
The above-mentioned instances form a small part of a larger uproar that the ecosystem is facing daily. With tolerance towards biases and stereotypes diminishing with each passing day, accountability has taken the center stage in 2020, and that is the core of every social media campaign, protest, or trending hashtag that comes forth during these testing times. The need of the hour,
To be aware. To analyze. To participate. Take a stand.
2020 is not the year for the bystanders.
