Can the fairtrade movement go mainstream?
by asi
Yesterday Cadbury announced that Cadbury Dairy Milk, UK’s best-selling chocolate bar is set to become Fairtrade certified towards the end of summer. When the bars go on sale the value of Fairtrade chocolate sales in the UK will leap from £45m to £225m. Cadbury’s commitment to buy 10,000 tonnes of cocoa under Fairtrade terms will triple certified sales from Ghana. This is huge news and I feel fortunate to be working with them on this project.
As some of you know already, we helped them launch a lovely blog where over the next 6 month until the CDM fairtrade certified bars hit the shelves, both Cadbury and the Fairtrade foundation will tell all the brilliant stories that involve that complex process of a massive corporation like Cadbury going fairtrade as well as lots of other stories from Ghana, Bournville and everything in between.
The fairtrade conversation is taking place for many years now and we’re hoping to tap in and contribute to this conversation. One of the objectives and greatest hope of this blog and everything we’ll do around it, and this is where I’d like some free advice from you is to try to take the fairtrade conversation and stories to more and more mainstream audiences and by mainstream I mean people outside the converted/advocates circles.
As you can expect it’s a pretty niche conversation and at first we are humbly joining this dedicated community but as I see it, the greatest challenge for the near future is to leverage the weight of Cadbury Dairy Milk as the most loved chocolate bar in the UK to galvanise a wider community of following for the fairtrade movement. I believe that there is an opportunity here for an educational/promotional job for fairtrade but with the frivolous touch of gorillas and eyebrows 
It is my ultimate wish that in retrospect this move from Cadbury will be considered the tipping point that has transformed the Fairtrade movement from a niche preference to a mainstream ethical benchmark.
We’ve got some cool surprises coming along the way but we are open for any ideas or suggestions – we love partnerships and collaborations and are planning to do nice things with different communities (foodies, crafties, greensphere, students etc). The next big thing is the Fairtrade’s fortnite Go Bananas event where we plan to come along and bring a big hairy fella with us.
Your feedback is hugely appreciated.