Stop Funding Hate is a new grassroots campaign in the UK that is already making a significant impact. Their theory of change is pretty straightforward:
- certain UK newspapers with powerful proprietors lie about and demonise immigrants and refugees
- the Press Complaints Commission is powerless to stop them and politicians are either scared to or don’t care
- consumers can act by lobbying the advertisers who spend hefty amounts of money with these papers
So Stop Funding Hate is coordinating this action, and they’ve started by targeting specific corporations who claim to value ethics.
They don’t even have a website yet (just Facebook and Twitter) but they’ve got a lot of attention just over the last couple of weeks by cleverly using the annual online ‘moment’ that is the launching of the John Lewis Christmas ad campaign, and have already achieved a significant win, with Lego saying that they’re not going to run any further campaigns in the Daily Mail.
A great example of people power and using digital channels well.