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The Occupy movement is a simmering stew. The kitchen is pleasantly full of chefs adding their own ingredients to the pot…ideas, goals, processes, and local community seasoning. Yet, as guests swing by the kitchen for a whiff of what's cooking, many are asking some reasonable and important questions about this stew: What's the recipe? Are you guys good cooks? Where's the beef?
I don't know the recipe. But there's one thing about this stew that I do know. I've spent the last 8 years thinking hard about one particular ingredient which needs to be part of it: Carrots.
I'm the founder of Carrotmob. A Carrotmob campaign is a new way to influence businesses. We invite businesses to take whatever socially-beneficial actions we want. If they agree to do what we want, we reward them by spending money at their business. It's the opposite of a boycott. Now, let me explain why this matters to Occupy.
The Occupy movement has raised many different grievances, such as unfair financial policies, extreme income inequality, a lack of jobs, and so on. Problems like this exist because public policy is influenced more by corporate interests than human interests. Corporations are just legal structures, yet somehow, even though there are seven billion of us humans, we currently have no effective counterbalance to the financial power of corporations. This must change.
Let's be clear on the cause of these problems. It's not really about wealthy people or executives. Our problems are not caused by evil masterminds who want to hurt us. Big companies are full of good people. People like us. Businesspeople just work hard to achieve whatever goals are defined by the system. CEOs may want to do good, but they can only do what the system allows.
Don't blame people. It's a distraction. Focus on the system. I believe our economic system is afflicted by a design flaw, and I believe we can fix it. So, even as many are asking Occupy to zoom in on more specific demands, I'm asking you to zoom out further and ponder this critical, overarching problem:
People should have more power than businesses, but they don't.
How do we solve that? Well, throughout history, people have tried to gain the upper hand over businesses by trying all sorts of things: The Boston Tea Party. The Labor Movement. Socialism. Boycotts. Protests. Petitions. Lawsuits. Marches. You name it, someone has tried it. Some of these ideas work well, others not as well. Nothing has worked well enough to save us from our current reality: Businesses have more power than ever before, and people have never felt so powerless. So what should we do next?
We should stop approaching businesses like they are piñatas, and start approaching them like they are donkeys.
Activists think of businesses as piñatas. They are above us, just out of reach, and we vent our anger by hitting them with a stick. Blinded, and dizzy with rage over the latest injustice, we take shots, hoping we'll knock off a leg or head, and if we're really lucky some candy will fall out to be gobbled by the masses below.
Love the concept but Unilever
Love the concept but Unilever is not the company you need to go after. Try Exxon Mobil or some of those who are really holding us back. You need a very large carrot mob for that.
CorporateMob is a bad
CorporateMob is a bad concept. CarrotMob is a good concept for supporting LOCAL business. Let's be clear: the problem isn't business it is CORPORATE dominated global business, democracy corrupting corporate business. I first learned about CarrotMob in San Francisco a few years ago when it was crowding corner groceries to encourage them to change light bulbs and do other green things. That's good work. But supporting global brands? And encouraging Occupiers to support that nonsense? The best way to bend corporations toward sustainable actions is to NOT give them your money unless and until they do. Better, support locally-owned businesses.
Doesn't corporate america
Doesn't corporate america already receive a bunch of carrots? I think we call them congress?
The carrotmob model has
The carrotmob model has potential for spreading effects beyond the targeted businesses. I make a point of buying fair trade chocolate, but right now I can only get it from fairly small manufacturers. If a company with the buying power of Nestle buys fair trade, that's going to be noticed all the way up the supply chain.
I recall a few years ago that McDonalds (yes, *them*) changed their beef-buying rules in a way that caused system-wide positive changes in slaughterhouse practices. McD may not be as conscientious about their shopping as I am, but their decisions will get a lot more attention than mine will.
might work... Carrotmob is a
might work...
Carrotmob is a good idea. To refine the plan, I'd recommend you lock people into making a sustainable purchase by putting the money in a dedicated account (like "Living Social" gift certificates) to make it "real".
I don't agree with the actvisit critique - as the Unilever example suggests, our actual purchasing power is a a tiny fraction of overall revenues. A much "easier" (or more direct) strategy would be to convince a big buyer (say Wal-Mart or the U.S. Government) to make a company improve (note this is sort of already happening.)
If you want to help the masses influence corporate behavior, you can direct campaigns targeting these big, high-profile purchasing entities, or you can go after the companies themselves. In general the power of activists against corporations is that they can scare a company into doing the right thing. The activist's tool is free media (letting tens of millions of customers know what the company is doing or should be doing), the companies' vulnerability is their brand equity (long-term corporate value which leads to both revenues and margin, not a short-term sales bump), and the companies never know how big of a "stick" the activist has until they say no to activist demands (which leads to a risk calculation with a gigantic liability vs. a small accounting of carrot revenue vs. the cost of the sustainability change they are being asked to make.)
So in short, I like the carrotmob idea as another tool to move companies in the right direction...but I don't believe its the most effective tool we can bring to bear to get companies to become more sustainable.
This is a fantastic post and
This is a fantastic post and an equally great response. It's wonderful to see all these ideas converge in this conversation. Fact is, we need both activists and enlightened consumers to push sustainability forward. As a sustainability consultant, I've seen a lot of evidence that mandates (whether from the government or Wal-Mart) are more compelling reasons for corporations (and frankly individuals) to change than incentives are. The average worker (and company) will rise to the level of compliance and not further. We have activists' demands to thank for forcing corporations to change (mainly out of fear). However, beyond that, companies need incentives and recognition to keep going down the sustainability path. Carrotmob is an inspired idea with proven results and tons of potential. It seems like an ideal vehicle for mobilizing consumer power to reward responsible companies - and give us each a voice, too!
The Donkey-Whisperer model,
The Donkey-Whisperer model, where the donkey is led by attraction rather than pushed by fear and pain, is of course the most reasonable and natural process for putting the donkey on the right path. See also the movie "Babe" about the pig who herded sheep by asking nicely and explaining how cooperation was good.
But there is also another fact of nature: the tendency to let senior executives' incompetence and jealousy -- purely personal factors -- paralyze initiative and wall off the organization from intrusion that might reveal which senior executives need to be retired so the organization can recover its vitality.
A Carrotmob assault on your business should be a welcome event. The Carrotmob can also include a smart swarm of creative problem solvers (cf. CR4, the Engineer's Blog) to work on examining the operations and improving them. A candid diagnosis would be useful. Employees are too scared of getting fired to offer suggestions that implicitly criticize their bosses, so reform can't come from inside. A Carrotmob can build a wiki around your business so that crowdsourcing becomes possible, any your business becomes a good cause instead of a pinata. Look at Lego, for example.
are you seriously quoting a
are you seriously quoting a hollywood movie as proof of concept?
Unilever did $60B in revenues
Unilever did $60B in revenues in 2010. that's billion with a "B". Do you honestly thing that $10M on Dove, which is 0.0166667% of that number is going to get them to significantly change their business model? Unilever probably wastes $10M on inefficient use of energy alone.
Mentioning Unilever's single
Mentioning Unilever's single revenue number by itself is absolutely meaningless. $60B sales after what investment? What is the return on assets? ROI? Etc. A single number is nothing - 60B is just sales, not profit. They could had lost their shirt on 60B.
Let's say they made 4B in profits - that might turn out to be such a low percent return they cannot stay in business over the course of a decade...I did not do the math - just illustrating.
$10M compared to $60B is indeed a small number. $10M compared to the absolute reality that minimum percentage returns must be made, or a bunch of people lose product choices/options and another smaller bunch lose their livelihoods, might just change the picture. $10M could be a very dear and large amount when examining the numbers, even in a $60B annual revenue company.
I'm tired of seeing people spew single numbers without context...
if they had lost their shirt
if they had lost their shirt on $60B, pretty sure unilever would cease to exist.
sales is perfectly relevant as a metric as the premise is $10Million in purchases from consumers (thus the inverse of unilever sales) would have even a tiny itty bitty impact on unilever's overall corporate philosophy or direction.
and at a net 2010 profit of $6B, $10M is still at best noise on the balance sheet.
any other MBA pablum nonsense you want to throw our way?