Carrotmob Makes It Rain from carrotmob on Vimeo.
For consumers keen to make a difference, collective action has long offered a simple solution. If you don’t like what a company is doing – be that ethically, environmentally or any other ‘ally – you can club together with other consumers and boycott.
Unfortunately, boycotting a business isn’t always as effective as you might hope. First off, you need to get enough people involved so that it registers on the company’s radar – either through a dent in their coffers or through negative publicity. Secondly, as soon as companies hear the ‘B’ word they batten down the hatches, roll out the platitudes and bring in the lawyers.
Carrotmob reverses the traditional adversarial model of collective action. Instead of boycotting the goods and services of ‘bad’ businesses, Carrotmob encourages those businesses by delivering a ready-made market keen to reward positive changes. Companies compete to ‘win’ a Carrotmob by committing to a series of changes and members sign up to support those businesses that win a campaign through direct consumer action – i.e. spending with them.
Scale is still an issue but by taking a positive approach to encouraging change, Carrotmob gets business on their side.
Companies are always looking for ways to trumpet the positive changes they make and see tangible results from those changes. Moreover, companies who are willing to make changes can see immediate results, making justifying the changes all the easier.
It’s also likely that the Carrotmob model will attract consumers that would be unlikely to participate in a boycott or otherwise take (negative) action.
Perhaps surprisingly, Carrotmob is actually a commercial venture and part of Virgance, the for-profit activism company. Although it does not earn any revenues at present, the long term aim for Carrotmob is to turn a profit through a, yet to be decided, combination of onsite advertising, sponsorship, merchandising and licensing of the Carrotmob branding to companies who win campaigns.
It would be a mistake to view the Carrotmob model as a panacea but if it helps encourage positive change, in a positive way, then it’s certainly a model that should be exported and adapted for as many worthwhile causes as possible.
In short, we love it.
Site: www.carrotmob.org
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