Whole Foods Boycott

Whole Foods Boycott

Hey Robert,

I read your post today mentioning the Whole Foods boycott that sprung up after the CEO published that op-ed in the Wall Street Journal. I got a chance recently to interview the main organizers of the boycott about how they've been using social media to amass supporters.

Anyway, I thought this was something you and your readers would find interesting.

take care,
Simon
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http://bloggasm.com/how-whole-foods-boycott-groups-are-using-social-media-to-organize

How Whole Foods boycott groups are using social media to organize
Posted in Politics Monday, August 24th, 2009

When Mark Rosenthal launched a Facebook group recently supporting a boycott of Whole Foods, he did virtually nothing to promote it. He left his computer for a few hours and when he came back he found that between 50 and 100 people had already joined.

“I was just starting it as a place to get the word out to my friends who I know shop at Whole Foods,” Rosenthal, 39, told me in a phone interview. “I have friends who spend hundreds of dollars a month at Whole Foods in Los Angeles and New York.”

The activist decided to create the group after reading a now widely-circulated Wall Street Journal op-ed from Whole Foods CEO John Mackey. The op-ed argued against a public option and in favor of deregulation of the current health insurance system in the US, and it blasted universal health care systems in other countries like Canada and the UK.

Many of the grocery store’s loyal customers — who tend to be left-of-center — grew angry at the op-ed and have organized boycotts. As of this writing, Rosenthal’s Facebook group has grown to over 26,000 members, and over the past week he and others have branched out to other social media platforms, including Twitter, Wordpress and Flickr.

“[The op-ed] lit a fire under me,” Rosenthal said. “This person was using his company as a sort of Trojan horse for a bunch of discredited, bad ideas that we have said no to over and over again. And it was just really frustrating because we had an election where we voted on these things, and we said no to these stupid ideas about deregulation being the solution to any of our problems. We’ve said no to the notion that ‘I’ve got mine and everyone else can go suck an egg.’”

As the Facebook quickly grew, he was approached by others who offered to help organize the boycott, and within days he added several other administrators to the group. One of those people was Steven Mikulencak, a town planner located in New York. The group soon got on a conference call and planned to expand outside of the Facebook group. Mikulencak registered the domain wholeboycott.com and quickly set up a Wordpress account for it. The group also designed their own special logo for the boycott, effectively creating their own anti-Whole Foods brand.

“I believe [Mackey] set up 99% of the boycott with his op ed,” Mikulencak told me. “All social media has to do is go the extra 1%. As a town planner I’ve studied community organizing and have worked with grass roots efforts, and I’m looking at this as an extremely effective, fascinating way to organize. It’s like nothing I’ve ever seen before.”

Both Mikulencak and Rosenthaul told me that they’re taking their time in promoting the boycott and are refraining from rushing to make any major decisions. They’ve begun posting user-submitted photos from people who are taking pictures of receipts from other grocery stores they’re shopping at and on the blog they’re listing boycott events that are taking place around the country. But they’re doing very little to actually organize these individual events.

“Our strategy is mostly through social media,” Mikulencak explained. “That has to connect with groups on the ground. We’re not organizing those, that’s spontaneous and independent from us. We hope to be a clearing house between all of them. The people on the ground will have to take some initiative, organize their own groups, set up some meetup.com accounts, and picket and leaflet and let their voices be heard.”

The activist said that much of the impetus behind the campaign has had very little to do with his own efforts, and more to do with an organic mass movement that has sprouted up.

“I’m coming to the conclusion that this is much bigger than the group that’s online. It’s growing no matter what we do. We realize that time is on our side, and we’re going to take our time, and let a coherent message evolve from our group. We’re a very patient group; boycotts take a lot of time. So we’re not feeling particularly rushed.”