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“No one can live with Swiss Chocolate!”
A campaign by the Swiss NGO Erklärung von Bern (EvB, known since 2016 as Public Eye) – called ‘Mit Schweizer Schoggi kann niemand leben!’ – comprising a research report, a guide, two spoof video advertisements & a public action.
Videos embedded above in full. Download the research report here and the guide here (both in German).
Trade justice activists not only need to choose the right things to grab public attention, they also need a good sense of both place and time. Whichever country your NGO is based in, find out what its iconic commodities are – like Switzerland and chocolate. Research what Swiss chocolate manufacturers are doing to reduce child labour and other exploitation in their supply chains, and launch your findings in the lead-up to an annual event where chocolate plays a huge part – like Easter. Choose an iconic seasonal chocolate treat – like an Easter Bunny – that’s a signature product for one of your target companies – like Lindt with its Gold Bunny (the one with the bell around its neck). Use animation to bring that bunny to life and invite members of the public to empathise with how ‘he’ might feel if ‘he’ found out the true story of his origins. Broadcast campaign ads featuring him finding out on TV and at the cinema. Encourage people to sign a facebook petition demanding Swiss companies produce more Fair Trade chocolate. Show it’s possible to do so by printing out the signatures on a giant Fair Trade chocolate bar and giving that bar to the CEO of one of the worst-ranked companies at a public event. Show your rankings come from a solid research report based on a questionnaire sent to all of your country’s chocolate companies asking them what they have put in place to address the well known exploitations in their industry’s supply chains. Categorise each company’s response as ‘advanced’ (doing good things), ‘so-so’ (doing something but not enough) and ‘refused to take part’ (not returning the questionnaire). Make these rankings public and invite their responses. What’s fascinating about this approach to activism is that it brings trade injustice into public debate – how supply chains work, what exploitations they contain, who and what causes them, how they can be addressed, and by whom? Companies can get cross with NGO assessments like this, argue that they are unfair and inaccurate, and that they’re doing more than they are credited with. The NGOs can then publicly respond to these new claims, draw critical attention to them, questions their assumptions, ask if they are deeds as well as words. What to many people might normally be inaccessible and overly-complicated explanations of labour rights and supply chain economics are easier to get into when things happen this way, because of the drama, the WTF-is-happening-to-things-I-love (material cultural) approach! Here we’re looking not at one piece of trade justice activism, but at three or four different pieces that were intended to work together (and as part of a long-running campaign). Pretty much every example of trade justice activism on our site has English as its first language. Here, we’re in Switzerland, so we’ve used online tools to translate the comments below from German and French (with a little Italian) into English.
Page reference: Ian Cook et al (2026) No one can live with Swiss Chocolate! followthethings.com/no-one-can-live-with-swiss-chocolate.shtml (last accessed <insert date here>)
Estimated reading time: 52 minutes.
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