Go Here Now // Carrotmob Chooses Carrots Over Sticks, "Buycotts" Over Boycotts

If you were excited by the infographic about The Future of Money that we posted back in December, you'll likely also share our enthusiasm for Carrotmob, an idea that fits right into that chart's "new lenses of wealth." Before you go any further, hit play on the video above for a quick and entertaining look at what it's all about.

Carrotmob takes the age-old concept of a boycott and flips it on its head. Rather than gathering together a group of people who promise to withhold money from a business to bring about change, Carrotmob proposes having a group pledge positive financial support for a business to achieve the same end. "We are called Carrotmob because we use the 'carrot' instead of the 'stick,'" the Carrotmob website explains. The reasoning? "In a boycott, everyone loses. In a Carrotmob, everyone wins."

In a recent feature on food and consumer choice, BBC 4 highlighted Carrotmob's "buycotts" as an example of a "growing attitude about technology and the desire to make things happen." Founder Brent Schulkin described how he started Carrotmob after noticing that boycotts don't really connect with how businesses make decisions. "What really matters to a business is money, spending, new customers, marketing and that sort of thing," he says.

On the Carrotmob website you can explore past campaigns that people have successfully organized across the globe. Focusing on convincing businesses to make environmentally friendly and sustainable changes, they range from asking a Bangkok grocer to stop using plastic bags to a Park Slope hardware store that agreed to use 22% of the money spent by Carrotmob shoppers on energy improvements. 

You can log into the Carrotmob website and share your own completed campaign, and soon you'll also be able to create and promote new ones. Start thinking of the carrots you and your network can dangle.

-- John Ruscher