David vs Goliath: can one person make a difference?

The other night I watched with interest as despite the impeding recession, Hugh Fearnley-Whittingstall was still encouraging consumers to spend more on chicken by purchasing free range poultry. This time though was an all out campaign against Tesco which failed. It was a rather ambitious campaign and perhaps one doomed to fail from the onset when they requested £87,000 just to put the idea to the share holders. I won’t be my usual cynical self and suggest that £87,000 could have been better spent elsewhere as it was an admirable campaign. Now the campaign is slowing back to a more realistic pace and asking for clearer labelling which won’t cost consumers at a time when money is tight and won’t put supermarkets on the defensive. It’s clear that lessons have been learnt from the David and Goliath battle with Tesco and a new tactic has come into play. Yes, all out war against a huge corporation can grab the headlines but real change is best achieved by the softly softly approach. Jamie Oliver only managed to make changes in school dinner by working with schools rather than standing against them.

This has got me thinking. Has my all out boycott of everything multinational been the wrong approach? Should I be encouraging the high street stores to clearly label their items with details of where and how they are made? Would it be possible to get the music industry to put how much solvents and metals are used in each CD? If I was a celebrity then it would be possible but can one person without media backing make a difference? Time will tell. In the meantime, its time for me to find out how other people have instigated change and what they did and who they recruited that make the difference between success and failure.