Carrotmob – A More Effective Approach Than Occupy?

The Occupy movement has been described as a simmering stew and Brent Schulkin founder of Carrotmob says for 8 years he’s been thinking hard about carrots in this stew.

What is Carrotmob?

The Carrotmob campaign is a new way to influence businesses. They invite businesses to take whatever socially-beneficial actions they choose and if they agree to do what Carrotmob wants, they are rewarded by the mob spending money at their business – the opposite of a boycott.

Corporations And Occupy

The Occupy movement has raised many different grievances, such as

• unfair financial policies
• extreme income inequality
• a lack of jobs etc

People should have more power than businesses, but they don’t. Even though there are seven billion humans, we currently have no effective counterbalance to the financial power of corporations.

The Big Picture – People Feel Powerless

Blaming various people in businesses distracts us from the big picture, so let’s focus on the system says Brent, who believes our economic system has a design flaw, but that it’s fixable.

How do we solve it? Businesses have more power than ever, and people have never felt so powerless. He says:

“We should stop approaching businesses like they are piñatas, and start approaching them like they are donkeys. “

The Solution

There are supposedly two ways to make a donkey walk forward. Either

• you hit its behind with a stick, or
• you dangle a delicious carrot out in front of it

Once a business gets big enough, decision-making generally gets quite simple: Businesses will do whatever makes them the most money. This is the problem. It is also the solution.

If we organize our spending as a group, then our money is a very powerful carrot, big enough to move even the most stubborn donkey.

We need to get organized. Carrotmob organizers around the world have already created 175 successful campaigns changing small community businesses.

It takes a psychological shift to go from attacking businesses to rewarding them. Brent explains:

“Carrotmob will never attack or criticize any business, for any reason. We don’t need to, because plenty of others already have that covered. The strength of our model is that everybody wins. Any company can feel completely safe coming to talk to us. Having a conversation with Carrotmob must never be a risk for a business, only an opportunity..

This is going to work because corporate marketing executives are going to enthusiastically take our phone calls. This is capitalism..supply and demand..

Big businesses are not designed to respond to our moral arguments. They are designed to respond to money..

So we are giving them money.. And what are we getting in return? Power. The power that we’ve been losing for decades.

As much as businesses enjoy having power, they will happily cede power and let us have things our way if it helps them get even more of our money..

Carrotmob as an organization must reject ‘the stick’ completely. But…fixing our societal problems will require protest. Peaceful protest illuminates the problems. Once everyone can see the problems, we will need solutions.

What are the solutions? Changing government by voting is one solution. Changing businesses by voting with your money is another solution.

Your anger is a gift. Use it.

The system described above will either come to exist, or it won’t. Our success or failure comes down to one simple thing: How big is our mob?”

Find Out About Carrotmob Campaigns Around the world click here.
To join Carrotmob click here.