Putting your mouth where your money is

[beetiger]

Most consumer food and beverage products have a reason for being. Some of them taste good, meet a need, fit an image. But occasionally, the reason for being for a product is to not-be something else. If it's directly relevant to the food you are planning to ingest, there's certainly some direct meaning to it. The whole organic/natural food movement fits in here. If it's politics directly related to the production of the product, such as the Fair Trade coffee movement, it's still pretty compelling.

Attempts to affect large corporations' policies by boycotts are popular, but more dubious,such as the campaign to get Pepsi out of Burma or make it apologize to hip-hop artists. But the broadest attemps at political impact via boycott are products that try to affect world policy.

Enter Mecca Cola, which, with its dual language graphics in French and Arabic, and its unsubtle slogan of "Stop drinking stupid, drink committed!", attempts to take on the US imperialist system, including Israel, via a new kind of cola wars. I'd be shocked if it had even a whisper of an effect on American policy, but it surely is an attractive niche product concept for its target market.

Comments

[heron61.livejournal.com]

Attempts to affect large corporations' policies by boycotts are popular, but more dubious,

Why dubious?

I must admit being fascinated by the Mecca Cola phenomena. I would be deeply amused and pleased if such efforts resulted in more and more profitable independent local industries and so ended up actually making positive changes in such areas.

[beetiger.livejournal.com]

Dubious because it's rarely been known to have the desired effect on the industry unless it's in the local community where the issue is occuring. The US boycott of Pepsi to try to affect policy in Burma was just a blip on Pepsi's radar screen -- their ultimate decision to get out of that was that it just was too difficult a market in which to do business. The associated PR for big campaigns may have some effect, but the drop in sales won't really.