A situation has arisen with regard to U2's 360 Tour--which opens Tuesday in Barcelona, Spain--that has interesting parallels to my feelings about coffee companies and their political engagement. U2.com has posted a PDF of a mask of Aung San Suu Kyi for fans to cut out and wear during a certain song, "Walk On," that is dedicated to ASSK during the band's concerts. A German fansite calls this action "questionable", and in its forum, German fans mostly ridicule it, saying that they go the concerts just for the music. My instinctive reaction was something along the lines of "Geez, this is U2. Don't like it? Follow another band."
Basically, the fans feel that the political message is being shoved down their throats in a heavy-handed manner. I have expressed my opinion here that Alterra conveys an ideology in their graphics and marketing materials in a heavy-handed manner. I suppose a valid response would be "Don't like it? Go to another coffeehouse." Well, I often do, though this narrows the field to a frustrating extent in the Milwaukee area. Another aspect is that Alterra sells food and drink, not culture per se. Everybody needs to eat and drink; it isn't a purely affinity-based thing like music. I feel like I should be able to drink a cup of coffee with someone who leans to the right of Genghis Khan, or to buy coffee from that person if it is of the right quality at the right price.
And it's just not Alterra--to be honest, the entire "farmers/organic/socially conscious/fair trade" complex mostly just provokes eye-rolling from me. One reason is the degree to which the promotion of these terms has been amped up since the recession began. Another is that the amount of aid that actually trickles down to the farmers sometimes seems small. Yet another is that it seems more expedient to use social consciousness-geared marketing in a market like Milwaukee, where coffee sophistication is relatively low but a sizable receptive audience (my snide remark: those who harbor white guilt--I've been there too) exists. This isn't Chicago, after all, where Intelligentsia can market their coffee on its actual attributes and quality, and a couple kids can open up a hole-in-the-wall place serving Intelligentsia, Chemex-brewed for $3.25, and find an audience of people who get it.
