Mobilise the fandom – followthethings.com

“iPhone 4CF“
A spoof website, press release and direct action by The Yes Men & students from the Parsons New School for Design via the Yes Lab.
Website pages embedded in slideshow above. Original iPhone CF website – www.apple-cf.com – shut down. Now partly available here.

Culture-jammers the Yes Men create a spoof ‘Apple’ website to launch a new iPhone whose ingredients are ‘conflict free’. They announce that you can upgrade your iPhone 4 to the conflict-free version free of charge. Working with students from the Parsons School in New York, they dress up as Apple Store employees and hand out leaflets that encourage shoppers to go inside and upgrade their iPhone to a conflict-free one, at no charge. This is such a brilliant idea, especially with all the recent news stories about a civil war in the Democratic Republic of the Congo where these regular iPhones’ rare earth ‘conflict minerals’ could be sourced. For many, Apple is taking the lead in this highly competitive and fast moving sector. As it always loves to shout about. It’s acting to remove conflict minerals in its supply chains, and inviting its shoppers to come on board as ethical consumers. When the shoppers take their leaflets into the store and are refused their free upgrade… When they realise that a ‘conflict free iPhone’ does not exist… When the Apple Store staff, many of whom were pleasantly surprised that Apple was doing this, realise that some of the people who look like their colleagues may be activists causing trouble… When the police are called in… When the story gets into the press (the whole idea) and Apple is forced to quickly publish a press release denying that a conflict-free iPhone exists… When the Yes Men quickly release a fake Apple press release that explains what the company is (not) doing to remove conflict minerals from its supply chains… When Apple forces the web host for The Yes Men’s fake iPhone 4CF website to take it down within hours… … the knowledge that Apple’s iPhones contain ‘conflict minerals’ has become an international news story. It helps that the Yes Men are highly experienced corporate impersonators (they call this ‘identity correction’). It helps that the carefully planned and often hilarious unravelling of the lies they tell are a magnet for business journalists who often don’t have many fun stories to report. And it helps that this is a positive critique: it’s perfectly possible that Apple could produce a conflict-free iPhone if it put its mind to it. This isn’t a negative, anti-capitalist critique of Apple – although the company seems to respond as if it is – it’s a good idea. They’ve shown what it looks like. How Apple could market it. That shoppers would trade their only iPhones for a conflict-free upgrade. Critics call the activists’ understanding of supply chain sourcing and the war in the DRC simplistic, but this prank kickstarts a debate which – years later – saw the production of conflict free smartphones. We plan to add a page to followthethings.com about the most famous of these – the Fairphone – in due course.

Page reference: Jack Parkin (2018) iPhone 4CF. followthethings.com/iphone-4cf.shtml (last accessed <insert date here>)

Page also available in Finnish here (coming soon)

Estimated reading time: tbc minutes.

Posted on November 10, 2024January 8, 2025 by Ian Cook

Hugh’s Chicken Run

Hugh [sobbing]: "I really don't want to kill another bird this morning'.
Hayley: 'You can afford free range. I can't. This is what I can afford.'
Hugh: 'To my delight, the response has been amazing. People really do care about chickens.'
Hugh: 'So, you are selling out of free range chickens'. Supermarket manager: 'We are'.

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Grocery

TV DOCUMENTARY SERIES

CHANGE CONSUMER BEHAVIOUR

CHANGE CORPORATE BEHAVIOUR

CHOOSE THE RIGHT THING

TARGET THE RIGHT BRAND

“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>)

Estimated reading time: 67 minutes.

Posted on October 14, 2024January 5, 2025 by Ian Cook

Dow Vs Bhopal: A Toxic Rap Battle

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Home & Auto

SHOW CAPITALIST EVILS

CHANGE CITIZEN BEHAVIOUR

CHANGE GOVERNMENT BEHAVIOUR

CHANGE CORPORATE BEHAVIOUR

START SOMEWHERE DIFFERENT

“Dow Vs Bhopal: A Toxic Rap Battle“
A music video by Sofia Ashraf published on YouTube.
Embedded in full above.

Chennai rap musician Sofia Ashraf’s Nicki Minaj-sampling protest song ‘Kodakainal Won’t’ goes viral on YouTube in 2015, drawing attention to a Unilever factory in India dumping mercury into the environment. A year later, she releases this video to draw attention to the most notorious industrial disaster in Indian history: an explosion at the Union Carbide pesticide factory in Bhopal in 1984 which released poisonous gas that killed more than 15,000 people and sickened over half a million more. A campaign has been running ever since for the victims to be compensated and the toxic legacy of the explosion to be cleaned up, even after Union Carbide was bought by Dow Chemical. Ashraf revived a rap written and performed in 2008 to support an NGO petition to the US Government’s Department of Justice to hold Dow Chemical to account. If the petition reaches 125,000 signatures, the DoJ is obliged to respond. In the video, Ashraf performs both sides of the argument as she sees it: the Indian activist side calling Dow Chemical to account, and the US government’s disdainful approach to those demanding compensation. The video encourages people to sign the petition. The 125,000 goal is reached. But what does this unlock? What can protest music do for trade justice activism?

Page reference: Nicole Sparks, Ginny Childs, Allie Short, Kat Cook, Lauren Warner & Sophie Wolf (2016) Dow Vs Bhopal: A Toxic Rap Battle (taster). followthethings.com/dow-vs-bhopal-a-toxic-rap-battle.shtml (last accessed <insert date here>)

Estimated reading time: 8 minutes.

Posted on September 20, 2024January 5, 2025 by Ian Cook

Banksy’s Slave Labour

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Home & Auto | Gifts & Seasonal

SHOW CAPITALIST EVILS

POP THE BUBBLE

REACH NEW AUDIENCES

CHOOSE THE RIGHT THING

BE A CELEBRITY

START WITH A PARADOX

JUXTAPOSE EXTREMES

INCLUDE SUFFERING KIDS

MAKE IT FAMILIAR

MOBILISE THE FANDOM

PLACE THINGS CAREFULLY

“Banksy’s Slave Labour“
Street art by Banksy briefly located on the wall of a Poundland Store in Wood Green, London.
Removed.

It’s 2012. Queen Elizabeth’s Diamond Jubilee is being celebrated in the UK. The London Olympics are also taking place. There’s Union Jack bunting everywhere. It’s cheaply and readily available in discount stores like Poundland. Including one in Peckham, South London. Where the street artist Banksy paints a mural of a child hunched over a sewing machine, making them in India. They spill onto the pavement. It’s a true story. But, like most of Banksy’s street art, it’s quickly stolen and auctioned on the international art market. The story goes viral. That’s usually what trade justice activists want. But that viral story isn’t about slave labour at all. Is the international market for celebrity street art, and the value of Banksy’s work within it, an effective channel to persuade retailers like Poundland to remove child labour from their supply chains?

Page reference: Lydia Dean, Lucinda Armstrong, Jessica Bains-Lovering, Emily Hill, Harriet Allen & Rose Cirant-Carr (2019) Banksy’s Slave Labour (taster). http://followthethings.com/banksy-slave-labour.shtml (last accessed <insert date here>)

Estimated reading time: 11 minutes.

Posted on August 19, 2024January 5, 2025 by Ian Cook

The Box

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Ship my order

MULTIMEDIA JOURNALISM

INTERACTIVE MAP

TEACH ECONOMIC GEOGRAPHY

START SOMEWHERE DIFFERENT

“The Box“
A global multi-media / multi-platform journalism project by the British Broadcasting Corporation (BBC), managed by the Container Shipping Information Service.
BBC News project outline embedded above. Project homepage here. ‘Latest location’ map page here (screengrab below). Download the template to make your own BBC ‘The Box’ container model here.

The BBC paints a 40′ shipping container with its distinctive livery and logo. They attach a GPS transmitted to follow its travels over land and sea. Each time it is loaded or unloaded, its journalists meet the workers, consumers and others whose lives are connected through its travels. What they find is logged live on an interactive map. Ship-spotters are tasked to find and photograph it. A unique high-tech collaborative research project emerges. It’s used by teachers to make trade a ‘live’, exciting topic. So what can it tell us?

Page reference: Tommy Sadler (2013) The Box. followthethings.com/thebox.shtml (last accessed <insert date here>)

Estimated reading time: 54 minutes.

Posted on August 19, 2024January 5, 2025 by Ian Cook

Trein Maersk: A Report To The NATOarts Board Of Directors

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Ship my order

TEACH ECONOMIC GEOGRAPHY

START SOMEWHERE DIFFERENT

LIE TO TELL THE TRUTH

“Trein Maersk: A Report To The NATOarts Board of Directors“
An electronic docupop album by Icebreaker International (Alexander Perls & Simon Break).
Free Spotify stream embedded above. Used vinyl & CD versions available on Discogs here.

NATO’s art division commissions electronic musicians Icebreaker International to create on board a container ship called the Trein Maersk as it travels between the ports of Yokohama in Japan to Halifax in Canada. NATO wants this to be a musical celebration of ‘free trade’. It’s a concept album that samples audio from its travels (including squawking seagulls) as well as ideological soundbites from champions of unregulated markets. Its tracks include ‘Port of Dubai’ and ‘The Third Way’ and they were written as the ship passed through these places, and as they reflected on these ideological arguments. The purpose of this work is educational. The CD booklet contains lots of information about world trade and a map of the ship’s journey. Online reviewers praise it as a masterpiece. This is a work of genius. Many are moved by the depth of feeling that this ‘electronic docupop’ has for the sea and for free trade. It’s the album Kraftwerk would have made if they weren’t so preoccupied with autobahns. So many of these reviews are so effusive in their praise that some think that something suspicious is happening here. Is this a genuine concept album or an elaborate prank? Does NATO even have an art division? Have these musicians ever travelled on a container ship? Are they really right wing musicians rebelling against activist representations of free trade? It could be true that that this music vividly evokes its logistics. Even if it does so sarcastically. Have a listen. See what you think. What role can a right wing (maybe) concept album play in trade justice activism? What can it do?

Page reference: Rachael Midlen (2013) Trein Maersk: A Report To The NATOarts Board of Directors. followthethings.com/treinmaersk.shtml (last accessed <insert date here>)

Estimated reading time: 31 minutes.