How many slaves work for you?

The word ‘slave’ provokes a response. It’s aggressive, it’s nasty, it’s taboo. Slavery Footprint says there are at least 27 million slaves working in the world today, and their website – SlaveryFootprint.org – uses a simple but very engaging mechanism to help consumers calculate the answer to the provocative question 'how many slaves work for me?'.

Millions have used it, and tomorrow – National Human Trafficking Awareness Day – Slavery Footprint is going to make a lot of noise, as hundreds of thousands take part in a social media flashmob to raise awareness of how we’re all supporting slavery through the everyday goods we buy.

And because we all know people respond to visual cues, the chain is everywhere. Not the traditional iron type that tugged at the ankles of slaves; this time it’s a corporate supply chain: slave, raw materials, manufacturer, brand, consumer.

“Everyone says they would have fought against slavery 150 years ago. Now’s your chance” we're told. “Today, you still have slaves working for you but they’re hidden deep within the supply chains of the products you love. In Uzbekistan, forced laborers harvest the cotton for your t-shirt, boys in the Congo mine the raw materials for your cell phone, and children in Ghana are enslaved on fishing boats and forced to catch a seafood supper.”

This campaign is one to watch. Not only is it symbolic of the increasingly effective tactics and tools that campaigning organisations are using to generate support, they’ve also adopted a very interesting strategy to provoke (force? inspire?) corporate change.

They primarily target the consumer. Not the company. Not the brand. Not the manufacturer. The person who's buying the products, unwittingly supporting slavery.

Slavery Footprint say that ignorance of slavery is what keeps it alive. They realise that a campaigning organisation is far more likely to get heard if a million voices are shouting at a business for change, rather than just one, and they think the consumers would shout if they knew.

The social reach of tomorrow’s thunderclap currently stands at 177,300. Tomorrow's social media extravaganza will take place in a largely indiscriminate direction, shouting loudly but not embarrassing any specific big brand. Give it a year though, and I wouldn’t be surprised if that army of passionate, volunteer campaigners was putting pressure on specific companies that haven’t sorted out their supply chains.

If you're in business and interested in the solutions, take a look at Made in a Free World for ideas - or talk to us!