The Long Arm of Social Media

In days of yore, starting a campaign meant finding and assembling like-minded people, talking to an MP, putting petitions together, writing to newspapers, starting a political party, dealing with red-tape, mobilising the reluctant, myopic or downright hostile. All that energy often wasted. And all that passion needed for what was often years of hard work. But not these days...

One day early this year, Simon Berry from Rural Net UK contacted Coca Cola and said something to the order of: "its amazing how you can get a Coca Cola drink anywhere in the developing world, and yet children still die of dehydration. How about we use your distribution networks to distribute rehydration salts and save their lives?"

To which, of course, Coca Cola did not answer - in that non-committal, non-responsive way corporations have been able to get away with for centuries. Who is this bloke Simon Berry anyway??

But then Simon started blogging and podcasting about it. And then he set up a Facebook group. And then Radio 4's iPM programme got interested. And then Annie Lennox said something about poverty and Coca Cola in the same breath on Desert Island Discs. And then...

Well now, Simon is talking directly to a bloke called a "Global Stakeholder Director" in Coca Cola. Boy-o-boy-o-boy. Bet he feels good.

It is truly staggering how the internet harnesses a simple idea and allows the `little man' to access an entity like Coca Cola. Of course, there are no guarentees this campaign will be successful, and Coca Cola, if they get interested, will be working it primarily for their benefit. But Ghandi's call to arms: "be the change you want to see in the world" is becoming a fact of life and choice for ordinary people every single day.

Rural Net now have a face to face meeting booked with Coca Cola on on 16th June 2008. Keep in touch with the progress of this campaign at:

http://beamends.typepad.com/simons_blog/coca_cola_campaign/index.html