What Does Carrotmob Mean For Consumers?
People want change. It’s not just hard-core, committed activists, either. A huge segment of the population cares about social issues and wishes to do good, but the old methods aren’t working for them. They don’t get excited about boycotts, protests or rallies. They may not make time to write letters to their newspapers. Luckily, Carrotmob offers more concrete results than the traditional approaches, and most scientists agree that Carrotmob’s style is hotter than eating a habanero-lava omelette at noon in Phoenix. Carrotmob simply asks people to coordinate and plan the purchases they are already making. This model is not threatening, not expensive, not time-consuming, not uncomfortable, not “radical,” not confusing, and not negative. It’s the perfect level of involvement for most people.
Carrotmob’s goal is to improve the world by helping companies embrace socially responsible choices. We are activists who accept the premise that corporations will nearly always continue to keep profit as their top priority. Historically, this situation has left activists feeling helpless. For example, many environmentalists have seen the pursuit of profit harm the environment time and time again, since the most profitable business practices are often destructive to the planet. Rather than rage against this tendency, we work with it. Carrotmob can put rewards in place that will make environmental responsibility the most profitable choice.
What Does Carrotmob Mean For Businesses?
Unlike most activists, we will never attack a business. Because we don’t need to. There is no need to use the stick when we have a carrot. In a Carrotmob event, everybody wins. Isn’t that a nice change of pace?
When a business wins a Carrotmob campaign, they profit. Every campaign is different. A small convenience store may profit by having hundreds of people come and spend thousands of dollars all at once. A huge soap company may profit by having millions of people decide to only buy their brand of soap in the future. The winners get cash, a boost in their reputation, free press, and more. Companies are competing in the free market, except all the people in the market have now actually organized themselves. If consumers decide that they want the top-selling beer company to be whichever beer company has all wind-powered breweries, you had better believe Carrotmob will make it so.
We’re playing by business rules. The game is business. The values are business. Each business takes the field with the best lineup they’ve got. Filling in for the umpire we have a stadium full of consumers.
Let’s play ball.
Core Stats
What is Carrotmob
Carrotmob is a method of activism that leverages consumer power to make the most socially-responsible business practices also the most profitable choices. Businesses compete with one another to see who can do the most good, and then a big mob of consumers buys products in order to reward whichever business made the strongest commitment to improve the world.
Who founded Carrotmob?
Brent Schulkin
When was Carrotmob founded?
It was gradually developed over a couple years prior to the first Carrotmob event on March 29th, 2008
How does Carrotmob make money?
Consumers never have to pay to plan or participate in Carrotmob events. We don’t take money from businesses involved in Carrotmob events either. We are exploring revenue streams that leverage the content created by Carrotmob events. Whatever we do, it will maximize the effectiveness of our activism without tainting the purity and fairness of the Carrotmob model.
What is Virgance’s goal for Carrotmob?
We want to use our technology and distribution to enable thousands of Carrotmobs all over the world!
Where Is Carrotmob Right Now?
The first ever Carrotmob event happened on March 29th, 2008, organized by Virgance co-founder Brent Schulkin. A video of that successful event helped explain and spread the Carrotmob idea around the globe. Soon Virgance was created and we set out to develop ways for Carrotmob campaigns to become more effective and scalable. We’re working on a web application for people who want to attend or plan Carrotmob events. Before long we will be releasing a basic version of that application. In the meantime, people who want our help making their own Carrotmob events happen have emerged all around the world. Volunteers have already organized events in England, Finland and Kansas City. We currently have people working on creating events in many other cities, from NY to Beijing to Eugene to Berlin. We’re going to ramp up the Carrotmob movement as we learn from seeing more campaigns in action, and as we build out new features to our technology. Once we reach a critical mass of consumers as part of the Carrotmob network, we can turn our attention from small local campaigns to large campaigns that can result in huge changes in the practices of global companies.
How do I become a Virgance Organizer?
Virgance is in the process of building out a network of organizers to help with our campaigns. If you are interested in being a national, statewide or local field operations leader within our organization please contact us and we will give you more information.
For details, email: organizer@virgance.com
How do I become a Virgance Volunteer?
Virgance is in the process of building out a campaign volunteer infrastructure. If you are interested in offering volunteer support and helping us expand our programs, please contact us and we will show you how to join in.
For details, email: volunteer@virgance.com