The charity has launched a viral campaign, to get the supermarket giant to pay its South African apple pickers an additional five pence per kilo picked.
It believes this extra money will hugely increase the workers’ standard of living.
The charity is using Twitter to drive people to a microsite and asks them to send five pence pieces to their local Tesco stores. The microsite (www.actionaid.org.uk/5p/) generated 67,000 hits within the first 48 hours of launch.
Action Aid brought on digital marketing agency Nonsense at the beginning of December to handle the online campaign.
‘We are placing relevant content where people are, rather than just relying on traditional marketing techniques’, said Action Aid corporates campaigner Jenny Ricks.
The campaign is part of a larger plan to put pressure on the government and supermarkets to form a new watchdog that will monitor supermarket chains’ activities.
