There needs to be a way to tie inappropriate corporate behavior to corporate profits.
This is part of a series of methods called Bite Back which deal with more active ways of dealing with unbranding. Instead of just dealing with personal unbranding issues at a very local level, this method forces the user to start considering the implications of supporting the branded corporations means in a larger context. What social agenda are the profits for your purchases going towards ?
This method fits in well with the Buying family of methods, especially Buying for Unbranding and Buying for Recycling.
This method could be at odds with Thinking Thifty, since a low-cost item might be made by a boycotted corporation.
It is also important to be able to know which products are made by which corporations, and which groups are boycotting which products, and why they are doing so. I don't have a good name for this yet. "Corporate Conscienceness" is close, but sounds way too Marxist. Yelch !
Search for "boycott" on your favorite search engine. Read up on boycotts currently going on, and pick a couple that sound interesting. Try to pick at least one that might be difficult to do, just to keep things interesting. Find a different supplier for the product, and never look back.
If the boycott concerns something you care about, become virual by telling others about the boycott, and generally trying actively to change the corporations behavior.
I don't think it's neccessary to even really care about the issue at hand for boycotts to be effective from a personal unbranding vantage - here we are basically using the boycotts as a way to point out products we could do without that we might not have considered before - the side effect of affecting corporate behavior is really a side effect.
You might also want to start your own boycott if you find something that really goards your goat, but that'll be another method for another day.
No special tools.
A willingness to try new products, and a total lack of loyalty to any brand or corporation.
The payback here is mainly educational - by learning about active boycotts, you learn something of the efforts people are making to change corporate behavior. You also learn someting about yourself by trying to avoid certain brands in supporting these boycotts - how really invasive is this corporation ? There may be some feelings of accomplishment if a boycott succeeds, but it probably won't be worth the effort. The main benefits here are in the "know thyself" category.