“Fazer ‘Blue’ Chocolate Cocoa School Campaign“ A corporate charity fundraising campaign by Fazer. Campaign advert in Helsingin Sanomat above.
Finland’s favourite chocolate company Fazer takes out a full front page ad in a leading daily newspaper. They promise to give 5 cents from every bar of Fazer Blue to a school building project in the Ivory Coast. This is where the company’s cocoa beans are grown by child slaves. Do these children need a school or something more from Fazer?
Page reference: Eeva Kemppainen (2024) Fazer ‘Blue’ Chocolate Cocoa School Campaign. followthethings.com/fazer-blue-chocolate-cocoa-school-campaign.shtml (last accessed <insert date here>)
“Hugh’s Chicken Run“ A three-episode TV series hosted by Hugh Fearnley-Whittingstall for Channel 4 TV’s ‘Food Fight’ season. Screengran slideshop embedded above. Search online to watch episodes here. Channel 4 episode guide here.
Private School-educated celebrity chef Hugh Fearnley-Whittingstall takes part in a season of actvist-themed ‘Food Fight’ TV programmes on the UK’s Channel 4. His Hugh’s Chicken Run series has three episodes. He wants to persuade the shoppers of his home town of Axminster in Devon to stop buying factory-farmed chickens. You can get 2 for £5. The animal welfare issues are horrendous. And he wants the UK’s supermarket chains to stock free range alternatives to give consumers a choice. But how can he do this? He tries all sorts of tactics. For different audiences. He educates consumers in a supermarket carpark about the cramped and unsanitary conditions for factrory farmed chickens. He can’t get access to film in a commercial chicken farm, so he sets up one himself, runs it for a while, and invites cheap chicken consumers to see where their food comes from. He works with residents on a low income housing estate in the town to keep rear their own chickens. This is where he meets single mum Hayley, who ends up being the ‘mother hen’ of the project. He lobbies the supermarkets throughout the series to improve animal welfare standards. At the end of the series, he bumps into Hayley at the supermarket. She’s just bought a couple of cheap chickens. Noooo. His experiment hasn’t worked. But she’s defiant. She can’t afford what he would like her to eat, even though she agrees with everything he’s doing. He has reached, some critics say, the limit of consumer-based and celebrity activism. He’s trying to appear to ‘ordinary shoppers’, but he doesn’t understand ‘ordinary’ realities. He’s a posh boy who went to Eton. But the supermarkets do respond to his activism. And to his activism documented in follow-up programme Hugh, Chickens & Tesco Too. There are more free range chickens in the shops as a result of this series. But is that enough? Surely anyone seriously concerned about animal welfare would be advocating veganism as the alternative? Wouldn’t that be better for the chickens? What we like about this example is what it does and doesn’t do, how it does and doesn’t work, what it includes and what it leaves out. It’s open about being imperfect.
Page reference: Ellie Beattie, Fliss Browner, Rose Hughes, Rosie Marsh, Joe Parrilla, Alice Raeburn & Maddie Redfern (2024) Hugh’s Chicken Run. followthethings.com/hughs-chicken-run.shtml (last accessed <insert date here>)
“Chewing Gum“ Undergraduate coursework written by Lucy Mayblin, published in the Teaching Geography journal. Full text below.
The students’ first task in the ‘Geographies of Material Culture’ module at the University of Birmingham is to make a personal connection between their lives and the lives of others elsewhere in the world who made the things they buy. These are the people who help you to be you, their lecturer (now followthethings.com CEO) Ian tells them. So choose a commodity that matters to you, that’s an important part of your identity, that you couldn’t do without. Think about its component parts, its materials, and the properties they give to that commodity and your experience of ‘consuming it’. And write a 500 word first person account that connects your lives. One student – Lucy Mayblin – ends up writing about being an accidental consumer. She’s walking to class. She steps in chewing gum recently spat from someone else’s mouth. It’s stuck to her shoe. But what exactly is stuck to her shoe, and why? She buys some gum and inspects the ingredient list. She searches the internet to find out more. What she finds out is shocking. She had trodden in the ‘war on terror’?! But is it true? To add to the stickiness of her work, she prints it out, rolls it into a tube, puts it into a shoe, and hands it in with some fresh gum on the sole. It sticks to the hand-in desk.
“The Fruits Of Our Labour: An Avocado’s Story“ A dissertation by Freddie Abrahams, submitted as part of their BA Geography degree at the University of Birmingham, UK. Sample pages from Introduction, Methodology & Findings in slideshow above. Click them to read the dissertaion.
Undergraduate student Freddie Abrahams is shocked to discover that the Carmel-branded, ‘Produce of Israel’ avocados he eats may be grown on illegally seized Palestinian land. There’s a campaign in the UK to boycott these fruits. So he contacts Agrexco, the Israeli company that supplies them, and asks if it’s possible to find out for himself. He travels to Israel and ends up on kibbutz farms. They’re not on Palestinian land. And they’re not farmed by Palestinian people. The people he meets are migrant workers from Ethiopia, Thailand and other countries. He’s baffled. The boycott protestors are so angry. They say that all Israeli avocados should be boycotted. But the Agrexco managers he’s met have helped him so much with his research. They have been so open. He hasn’t seen any avocados being grown on Palestinian land. But Agrexco wouldn’t help him to see that, would they? His research does throw some doubt on facts of the boycott. So what’s his dissertation about? Following acovados? And/or the politics of knowledge in following avocados. What research are thing-followers allowed to do? What access can they gain to what spaces? Who gives permission? Who shapes what they learn to see? Freddie’s research was unusually easy to do.
Dissertation reference: Freddie Abrahams (2007) The Fruits Of Our Labour: An Avocado’s Story. BA Geography Dissertation: University of Birmingham, UK (followthethings.com/the-fruits-of-our-labour-an-avocados-story.shtml last accessed <insert date here>)
Page reference: Freddie Abrahams (2011) The Fruits Of Our Labour: An Avocado’s Story. followthethings.com/the-fruits-of-our-labour-an-avocados-story.shtml (last accessed <insert date here>)
“McLibel“ A documentary film written by Franny Armstrong and directed by Franny Armstrong & Ken Loach for Spanner Films. First released in 1998, extended version released in 2005 (the trailer for the latter version is embedded above). Search online to stream the whole film here. DVD extras Youtube Playlist is here. Original protest leaflet is here. Campaign website here.
Gardener Helen Steel and postman David Morris hand out leaflets outside McDonald’s restaurants in London. They tell consumers what’s wrong with the company and its food. Especially the cruelty in its meat supply chains. McDonald’s sues them for libel. What follows is the UK’s longest libel trial. An extraordinary ‘David vs Goliath’ drama in which the defendents defend themselves against McDonald’s highly paid corporate lawyers. When it’s over, it’s called it the ‘biggest public relations blunder in the history of public relations blunders’. It’s the earliest example we have found of the ‘Streisand Effect ‘in trade justice activism: where efforts to silence a critique of corporate misbehaviour backfire so spectacularly that the critique is amplified! Millions of people around the world got to know about Steel and Morris’ leaflets because McDonald’s sued them in court and because Franny Armstrong filmed what happened! TV channels couldn’t show her film because they feared McDonald’s will sue them. But McLibel film became a ‘cult classic’, nevertheless. The 2005 remake – with added courtroom re-creations – was released on DVD after films like Morgan Spurlock’s Supersize Me focused mainstream criticism on McDonald’s. In 2016, Armstong’s production company released McLibel in full on YouTube. Everybody could see it now. In 2024 it gained renewed attention when the young lawyer who gave Steel and Morris legal advice became the UK’s Prime Minister: Keir Starmer.
Page reference: Hannah Doherty, Rosie Benbow, Philippa Day, Meike Schwethelm, Hannah Griffiths and Alice Nivet (2013) McLibel. followthethings.com/mclibel.shtml (last accessed <insert date here>)
“Broccoli & Desire: Global Connections & Maya Struggles In Postwar Guatemala“ An academic book by Edward F. Fischer & Peter Benson published by Stanford University Press. Google Books preview embedded above.
There are shoppers in Nashville USA who are conscious about their health and shop for healthy vegetables like broccoli in their local supermarkets. There are farmers in Guatemala who are trying to hold onto their land and to make a living by growing vegetables like brocolli for export markets like the USA. Each has their own rich and fascinating story to tell about their lives, their work, their dreams and desires for a better future. In this book, their lives are seen as interdependent as the authors travel along Brocolli’s supply chain, connecting these worlds and lives through detailed ethnographic fieldwork and description. They find that shoppers’ and farmers’ lives, and the impacts that they have on one another, are bound together in complex geographical and historical webs of connection. Like the best ‘follow the thing’ work, this study of a commodity that many wouldn’t think twice about on the supermarket shelf. But, once you start to examine it, ask questions about it, and start following it, what you find is often staggering in its contrasts, connections, depth and feeling. For the authors, the concept of ‘desire’ is something that this vegetable’s farmers and shoppers have in common. Could shoppers’ desire for cheap food be re-aligned into a desire for more equitable relations with farmers (even if this might cost a bit more)? Can there be foods that are good for the health and wellbeing of everyone in their supply chains? This is an admirable intention, but we haven’t been able to tell if and how this book encouraged others to think this was and to act on this way of thinking. What impact can an academic book have?
Page reference: Keith DellaGrotta and Meredith Weaver (2011) Broccoli & Desire: Global Connections & Maya Struggles In Postwar Guatemala. followthethings.com/broccoli-desire-gobal-connections-maya-struggles-in-postwar-guatemala.shtml (last accessed <insert date here>)
“B’eau Pal Water“ A spoof commodity-based activist campaign created by the Yes Men and the Bhopal Medical Appeal. Video playlist embedded above posted on YouTube by the Bhopal Medical Appeal.
It’s the 25th anniversary of the Union Carbide chemical factory explosion in Bhopal, India. It’s the worst industrial accident in history. 3,700 people died immediately. Between 8,000 and 25,000 people had died since. And up to 200,000 were permanently injured and countless more continued to be affected by the leaching of toxic chemicals into the water table. Still, the factory’s owners (Dow Chemical, who bought Union Carbide) refuse to pay compensation. So the Bhopal Medical Appeal get together with pranksters the Yes Men to design a new brand of bottled water. It’s a mineral water. B’eau Pal Water. A taste of Bhopal. “Bottled at source”, they say. Presented in a beautifully designed bottle. The Yes Men travel to Dow’s UK HQ to challenge its executives to drink it, just as Bhopal residents have for the past 25 years. When they arrive, the building is empty. Why won’t they drink this? When they offer it to passing members of the public , everyone understandably refuses once they know what’s in it. So is this campaign a success? Does it draw renewed attention to this long-running scandal? Is it OK that what they’re doing is ridiculous, funny, and that people are disgusted but also laughing about this prank? The Bhopal explosion wasn’t funny. So is this prank in poor taste? Is it offensive? Or can its humour embarrass Dow and bring the Bhopal factory explosion back into the news cycle? Can offering people a fancy bottle of toxic mineral water that they would never drink bring them closer to the people living in Bhopal who have no choice but to drink it? What’s the logical response to this? What has to happen to make this situation right? This bottled water later becomes a potent symbol of the compensation campaign at the 2012 London Olympics – where Dow is a corporate sponsor and a Bhopal survivor challenges the chair of its organising committee to drink it – and in Bhopal itself, when the victims and their families invite the Indian politicians and scientific advisors who had dismissed their complaints about contamination to a buffet of toxic delicacies including bottled B’eau Pal Water.
Page reference: Jack Parkin (2018) B’eau Pal Water. followthethings.com/beau-pal-water.shtml (last accessed <insert date here>)
“Big Boys Gone Bananas!*“ A documentary film directed by Fredrik Gertten for WG Film AG, Sweden Free trailer and on-demand stream embedded above. Search online for other streaming options here. The second of two films on this topic. The first is “Bananas!*”. See our page on this here. See the films’ website here.
Swedish documentary filmmaker Fredrik Gertten and his small film company team are looking forward to the premiere of their courtroom documentary Bananas!* at the Los Angeles Film Festival. It follows a class action case in the California courts where a group of Nicaraguan Banana farm workers hold the Dole corporation accountable for their sexual impotence by making them use an agrochemical that had been banned because it caused it. Their case is put together by a California-based attorney, and the documentary includes grainy in-court testimony not only by the farmers but also by the Dole bosses who made the decision to continue using that agrochemical. The film documents a success story, more or less, with significant financial compensation being awarded to the workers. This is a test case. The first of its kind. So more cases will follow. More costs for Dole. More embarrassment. So Dole fights back, mounting a sophisticated public relations campaign to discredit the case (charging its lawyer with fraud) and the film (claiming it’s uncritically promoting this lawyer’s fraud). This campaign starts before the film has been screened. By people who have not seen it. News articles appear reporting that the film is a fraud. The festival is forced to withdraw it from competition, to show it at a remote theatre, and the festival director has to read out a disclaimer before it’s shown there. Then negative reviews start to appear as soon as it’s seen. Can this seemingly coordinated effort to silence corporate critique succeed? What would you do as a filmmaker if this happened to you? Gertten does what he knows best. He turns his camera on and makes a film about Dole’s attempts to discredit his film. He steps out from behind the camera to become its central character. Unbelievable things are happening to him, to the people he works with, and to the film they made together. But his film company had taken out an insurance policy that allowed them to pay for expensive legal help to fight back. They cleverly coordinate an counter-information and crowndfunding campaign. And a surprising international collection of allies come to their aid. Dole’s efforts to censor Bananas!* are a complete failure and, more than anything, make it and this Big Boys sequel a 100% must see double-bill for anyone interested in trade justice actvism. Read below to see how this story unfolds. It’s a genuine ‘David vs. Goliath’ story. You could never make this up! There’s so much to learn from this. Buckle up.
Page reference: Camilla Muirhead, Katie Lambert, Katie Joyce, Will Sensecall, Izzie Snowden, Matt Creagh & Harry Cousens (2020) Big Boys Gone Bananas!*. followthethings.com/big-boys-gone-bananas.shtml (last accessed <insert date here>)
“Bananas!*“ A documentary film directed by Fredrik Gertten for WG Film AG, Sweden Free trailer and on demand stream embedded above. Search online for other streaming options here. The first of two films on this topic. The second is “Big Boys Gone Bananas!*”. See our page in this here.
Swedish Filmmaker Fredrik Gertten tracks a ‘class action’ legal case in which lawyers working on behalf of a group of Nicaraguan banana workers sue the American fruit multinational Dole in a Califiornia court for exposing them to a banned pesticide known to cause impotency in men. Gertten follows a flamboyant Cuban-heritage, Los-Angeles based lawyer called Juan ‘Accidentes’ Domingiuez as he and his team gather evidence from affected workers and present it in court. Grainy court-TV footage is cut into the film, and the scenes are remarkable. Dominguez’ attourney Dwane Miller encourages Alberto Rosales and other plaintiffs to explain how their lives were ruined by these chemicals robbing them of their fertility. And when Dole CEO David Delorenzo is in the dock, Miller gets him to admit that Dole used these banned pesticides knowing the risk. Dole attorney Rick McKnight cross examines the plaintiffs, aiming to show they are drunks and liars. When the verdict comes in, Dole is largely found guilty and ordered to pay compensation to the plaintiffs. Dominguez conveys the good news to the farming communities, phoning in to a radio show, and visiting to talk to a packed hall of workers. He’s a hero. But this is a test-case. If it’s successful, thousands of other victims would be able to claim compensation from Dole too. So, as the film is being readied for its premiere at the Los Angeles Film Festival, Dole launches a sophisticated smear campaign against Dominguez (accusing him of fraud – a charge later discmissed) and the film (which they claim is based on fraudulent content). Suspiciously, damning reviews appear in newspapers and film trade publications before teh film has its premiere (i.e. before anyone had seen it). Dole forces it to be taken out of competition and the festival organiser reads a disclaimer to the audience before its only screening. Fredrik Gertten, the director, doesn’t know it at the time but this is be the first of two films he will make on this topic. The second will be about Dole’s attempts to silence the first. He films everything as the chaos unfolds. [See our page on the sequel – ‘Big Boys Gone Bananas!*’ – here] But this scandal means Bananas!* picks up priceless free publicity, and diverse allies, worldwide. When it’s finally distributed, it’s marketed as ‘the film Dole doesn’t want you to see.’ Maybe if Dole had left it alone, Bananas!* wouldn’t have become a ‘must see’ example of trade justice fillmmaking, then and now. If their corporate public relations team had decided to just keep quiet, they wouldn’t have amplified Dole’s corporate misbehaviour that Bananas!* tracked so diligently. Amplifying a critique by trying to silence it is called the ‘Streisand Effect’, by the way, and this isn’t the only example on our site. So much happened in and around this film that this is an epic followthethings.com page. There are so many comments to read. But does the scandal about the silencing of the film distract from the scandal of Dole’s banned pesticide use, and its effects on so many thousands of banana workers in Nicaragua? As you will see, the answer is yes and no.
Page reference: Ian Cook et al (2020) Bananas!*. followthethings.com/bananas.shtml (last accessed <insert date here>)
“Ghosts“ A documentary film written by Nick Broomfield, Jez Lewis & Hsiao-Hung Pai, directed by Nick Broomfield for Beyond FIlms Official trailer embedded above. Available on Box of Broadcasts (with institutional login) here. Search online here for other streaming availability.
Documentary filmmaker Nick Broomfield is known for his quirky, in-front-of-camera documentaries but, after a 2004 disaster where 23 Chinese migrant workers picking cockles were drowned by a fast-incoming tide in the UK’s Morecamble Bay, he decides to make a docu-drama to show what happened and why. This is a tale of people smuggling, modern slavery and violent, corrupt gangmasters sourcing and providing cheap slave labour in the UK to pick vegetables like spring onions and seafood like cockles for sale in mainstream supermarkets (which the film names). It was co-written with Hsiao-Hung Pai – a Taipei-heritage UK journalist and writer – was researched through the writers’ visit to China to visit the victims’ families, starred former illegal immigrant Chinese non-actors working with an improvised script, was filmed where the disaster happened, and ends with a plea for audience members to donate to a fund to help the dead workers’ families pay their people-smuggling debts. The tale is told from the perspective of a female worker called Ai Qin. She and her compatriots speak in Mandarin so that that ‘Ghosts’ – their white gangmasters – can’t understand they are mocking them. In the final scene, just before Ai Qin drowns, she calls her son in China to sing him a farewell song on her mobile phone. Who is to blame for their deaths? The migrant workers? The people smugglers and gangmasters? The supermarkets? The government? This film was made to be put to use, to have a positive impact. On public attitudes to migrant workers. On the law. On the victims’ families. In contrast to a documentary film, a docu-drama can script and film anything, anyone, anywhere. So a fuller picture of the challenges that workers and trade justice activists face can be pieced together to provoke change.
