How Whole Foods boycott groups are using social media to organize
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.”
using free market tactics to oppose the free market is brilliant, i have to say.
Also, John Mackey donates $1 million to charities every year and recently cut his salary down to $1. He is the proof that capitalism can have a heart. Ignorant people want to tear that down.
You should perhaps note that Whole Foods has also gained customers it previously did not have who agree with John Mackey.
Whole Foods may have gained some new customers, but those weren’t the ones WF was targeting in the first place, therefore their most of the stores are in the wrong locations. Also WF has basically destroyed its brand which took 20 years to build.
Jack Mackenna? Really? You’ve got to be kidding! I suppose it’s no coincidence that your initials happen to be the same as those of John Mackey? Didn’t you get in trouble before for anonymously posting to help your own company John? I suppose like a drug addict, habits are hard to change.
Simon, you’ve been linked.
I question the left’s commitment to this boycott. The Sinistral, a DailyKos diarist notes that many liberals end up shopping at Wal-Mart as well. These kinds of things usually blow over for companies. Also, isn’t it a little McCarthyite to boycott someone for political beliefs?
It’s one thing to simply have a political belief while running a business and quite another to spend money to kill a program based on that political belief. In that later case you may have come out against many of your customers who have the right to boycott. That’s freedom and capitalism all wrapped up in one. If he wants to switch out his customer base, that’s his right.