When Consumers Become Combatants
The key components to boycotting and why protesting the Jimmy Kimmel Live! suspension worked.
One of the primary fronts to resist any autocracy is by targeting its economic engine. Boycotts—the consumer or merchant-side refusal to materially support an entity through coordinated but decentralized non-spending—are woven into the fabric of America’s founding, dating back to when merchants in Virginia and Philadelphia boycotted the trade, consumption, and export of British goods. Over the course of American history, boycotts remained a key tool in rallying against workplace and labor abuses, antisemitism, price gouging, racialized and gendered violence, discrimination, and most notably: genocide. Boycotts have proven to be a versatile tool of resistance, mobilized against the Nazi regime, Apartheid South Africa, and more recently, Israel’s crimes in the occupied Palestinian territories. Alongside tried-and-true strategies, today’s tactics have evolved to include canceling subscriptions, review bombing, and coordinated social media campaigns.
While boycotts have historically targeted different kinds of issues, the American right has weaponized boycotts by integrating them into every culture-war battle producing mixed outcomes; from burning and boycotting Nike shoes, shooting Bud Light cans, and refusing to purchase certain video games for being “woke.” Despite skepticism of their outcomes, boycotts are an effective mechanism—particularly in concert with other tactics along other fronts and targets of non-violent resistance. Prominent and contemporary examples of ongoing legitimate boycotts include the Boycott, Divest, Sanction (BDS) movement, the boycott of Target for withdrawing their DEI initiatives, and the Tesla Takedown.
Based on successful boycott efforts across the 20th and 21st centuries, we can highlight three crucial components that make them successful:
Based on successful boycott efforts across the 20th and 21st centuries, we can highlight three crucial components that make them successful:
Focused Rhetoric: People need to know why you are boycotting and why they should be too. Without this, organizers see recruitment tail off, credibility drop for future organizing, and even counter-protesters looking to nullify the impacts of the boycott. The key is the high-profile and widespread diffusion of a simple, credible, and emotionally-resonant argument. This allows early adopters to quickly spread the message, minimize the effectiveness of counter messaging, provide an emotional tether for undecided people to individualize, and maximize the clarity for the rare moments of exposure from the mass-media attention cycle.1 Unlike mass demonstration—which is perceived as a higher-risk tool and preferred by those lacking belief in the system—we have found in HIT Strategies’ polling that people who are motivated and empowered to vote are more likely to participate in boycotts. These early adopters are the primary target of agitation because this group trusts enough in parts of the system to believe their actions can affect change.
Sustained Pressure: Unlike local businesses with thinner margins, smaller resource pools, and limited sister-products on the market, multinational corporations are more resilient to short term—even if severe—boycotts. As more of the corporate revenues and valuation exists in speculation rather than in sales and production, finding ways to impact the pockets of decision makers (i.e., shareholders, investors, board members, CEOs) through conventional boycotts becomes increasingly difficult. Single-day blackout boycotts often fail to register damage to large corporations. The most successful boycotts often require months and even years of exerted action.
The Fostering of Viable Alternatives: Given the need for long-term boycott campaigns, an important part of the effectiveness of a boycott is to minimize the drop-off rate. People need reasonable replacements for goods and services those companies provide to yield a sustained threat—a feat much harder to accomplish in a world of corporate consolidation and the decline of local businesses. Divestment from boycotted companies and reinvestment by organizations and businesses into alternatives can provide more immediate backlash through large-scale consumer shifts while also boosting the viability of chosen alternatives in the minds of consumers. A boycott’s true power lies in people recognizing their leverage as consumers, shifting their spending away from the offending corporations and toward aligned alternatives.
These three components make resistance accessible and increase the odds of more people joining. When looking at increasing participants, resisters should be looking for ways to create resonant messaging to have more buy-in from bystanders and to lower the barriers of entry by lowering the external costs of joining in.2 The most common external costs that HIT Strategies’ research has surfaced are knowledge gaps and fear of retaliation. The ubiquity of mass demonstrations has led many Americans to equate “resistance” almost exclusively with mass demonstrations—often overlooking the many other forms of nonviolent action available. HIT’s research shows that Americans frequently fail to recognize activities like information-sharing and boycotts as acts of resistance, even as they are participating in them. While some segments of Americans are eager to engage in every possible tactic against the administration, most remain hesitant out of fear of personal reprisal—especially those living in deeply conservative areas or hold privilege. As a result, Americans tend to gravitate toward what they perceive as lower-risk strategies, such as boycotts, petitions, social media engagement, and contacting elected officials.
Our research also surfaced that a major reason many Americans refrain from participating in acts of resistance is isolation—people are far more likely to join when they know someone else will stand beside them. Educating the public about the diverse forms of resistance and connecting them to existing networks can help lower these social and psychological barriers to entry. Expanding participation not only strengthens the movement’s collective power but also minimizes individual risk, creating conditions for a self-reinforcing cycle that could mobilize a critical mass of Americans.
One such example of the effectiveness of pairing low-risk actions with a highly activated group is the recent turnabout from ABC on the suspension of Jimmy Kimmel Live!. The success of this pushback shows the importance of (1) a unified rhetoric, (2) an activated coalition of stakeholders and consumers, and (3) a real threat of viable alternatives. A whole host of key stakeholders—including prominent elected officials from both political parties, news organizations, political pundits, celebrities and social media influencers from across the spectrum—came out against the Federal Communication Commission’s (FCC) actions. Additionally, the stronger union presence and culture of worker power in Hollywood facilitated the quick and cohesive mobilization against the move in a sector where opposition has real teeth. This led to condemnations, picketing, calls to boycott, and threats of non-cooperation and walkouts from entertainers across the industry. Over 400 high-profile entertainers joined an ACLU public letter of condemnation, and leading stars in prominent Disney, Hulu, and ESPN programming openly encouraged fans to boycott affiliated programs, subscriptions, related products, and advertisers.
Amid a wide range of voices—from Candace Owens to Ted Cruz to Barack Obama to Mark Ruffalo to Meryl Streep to Olivia Rodrigo to South Park—the message was clear: the government should not control speech by removing content that it deems insufficiently favorable to its interests. Recent YouGov polling found that most Americans already opposed the move, with over 40% strongly opposing, which can be incredibly dangerous for entertainment companies, a market dominated by short attention spans, many competitors, highly elastic demand for content, and low barriers to substitution. While the market cap losses neared $5 billion and the Disney+ site crashed as people rushed to cancel subscriptions (over 1.7 million recorded cancelled subscriptions for Disney, ESPN, and Hulu), the leading factor might have been internal factors at Disney, including a planned price-increase rollout and strife among employees on the decision. This exemplifies how targeted external pressure can empower internal dissenters and pressure initial supporters to reconsider—as within a week of the decision, Jimmy Kimmel Live! had returned.
Focused rhetoric, sustained pressure, and viable alternatives are essential for any boycott to succeed. In a time when many Americans feel helpless, we need to remind them of their power to affect change—including through small and low-risk actions. The campaign against Disney underscored how an organic, consumer-driven front can translate economic resistance into tangible power.
This book chapter details the rhetorical arguments of protests and opportunism in engaging with external forces (namely media attention) through the lens of a case study of a shoe brand in Austria protesting the financial markets’ attempt to shut down their consumer investment model.
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