Interview with Carrotmob’s creator, Brent Schulkin

Posted by: Vicky

You may have seen a very interesting video knocking around the internet lately from the innovative organisation Carrotmob. In this video called ‘We Make it Rain‘ they use consumer power to turn a regular grocery store to a much more environmentally friendly one. I don’t want to give too much away, you really need to watch the video yourself, then read the interview below…

Carrotmob Makes It Rain from carrotmob on Vimeo.

Carrotmob’s ethos really appeals to me. It’s all about reaching those with the real power - businesses - to make actual, tangible changes. Plus this isn’t done through demonising business, negative pressure or boycott but actively encourages businesses to compete to become more environmentally friendly.Here at Green Girls Global we’re very lucky to be able to get an exclusive scoop on the genius behind Carrotmob, Brent Schulkin, and find out what inspires him, how Carrotmob works and where it’s going next….

Q1 Welcome Brent. The idea behind Carrotmob and your ‘We Make it Rain’ campaign is one of the most inspiring I’ve seen in ages because it really speaks to businesses in a language they understand - profit and competition. Where did you get the initial idea?

Why thank you! I started off thinking about the consumer side of the transaction. Several years ago, I read a book called Smart Mobs, by Howard Rheingold. It got me thinking about the power that can be created just by connecting groups of people into networks, and spurring those networks into action. Later I realized just how promising a network of consumers could be as a carrot to change corporate behavior. The idea of creating positive incentives for business to do good is not entirely new, but there are several recent developments that make now a good time for this approach to flourish: First, technology now allows us to easily connect and coordinate our activities like never before. Secondly, in the last couple years, environmentalism has gone mainstream. And third, we have a reputation economy, and companies are putting huge resources into protecting or improving their reputation. Moreover, these days bloggers and normal citizens have much more power over the reputation of businesses. In an age when companies are desperately trying to be seen as authentic and good, they have plenty of motivation to try and please an authentic grassroots network of consumers like us, since they know we have great power when it comes to defining their reputation.

Q2 How did you publicise your first campaign and gain so much support?

I emailed my friends, and then it turned out that people thought that the idea was interesting enough that it was worth forwarding the email to their friends. I would also give a lot of credit to Facebook and other social networks.

Q3 In the Make it Rain video we see a regular grocery store taking part and gaining some real financial benefits. How do you see the same principle translating to big businesses?

There’s something very attractive about having a community event, and focusing on local businesses. I want to keep doing that, and cultivate little Carrotmob franchises all around the world. However, in order to have a greater environmental impact, I’d like to see our main focus turn to big well-known brands. Once our network is big enough, we should be able to go to competing consumer products companies (who make things that your average consumer would want to buy) and have them compete to see how much good they are willing to do, relative to their competitors. It will be challenging to develop a system for comparing the proposed actions of companies that may be doing business in very different circumstances, but we’ll figure out how to do it, and then companies will do what they do best: compete for profits. I think we can use that competition to get them to commit to making significant improvements. And the nice thing about dealing with the heavy hitters is that even if they are only willing to do something relatively small, the impact would still be enormous compared to what a little grocer can do.

Q4 Does it matter what a businesses’ incentive is to improve its environmental practices?

The short answer is no, but I must make a few distinctions. There are privately held companies and publicly held companies. When some rich family owns a company, they can do anything they want with it. They can be greedy and pollute, or they can be environmentally responsible and make sustainable choices. They may be susceptible to arguments about morals, right and wrong, etc. But when you are dealing with publicly-held companies, you’re dealing with a cold machine that knows nothing of right and wrong. When you’ve got a gazillion stockholders and financial institutions calling the shots, profit is the only thing that matters. It is actually illegal for publicly-held companies in the US to do good unless that good is also profitable. That goes back to the Dodge brothers suing Henry Ford for trying to give some cash to his workers rather than his investors. But I digress. The point is that when you’re talking about these huge companies, there’s no point in asking what the business incentive is, because there is only ever one incentive: money. It’s an ironic situation, because lots of these companies are filled with people who have very strong morals, but even a company with Mother Teresa as a CEO can’t get around this situation. Imagine that Mother Teresa decides to take the profits of her oil company and spend billions of dollars to clean up old oil spills, give college scholarships to the children of all their workers, end world hunger and cure AIDS. The next fiscal quarter rolls around and shareholders find that they didn’t get to line their pockets as much as they expected. They have the power to fire Mother Teresa. They also have the power to sue. Mother Teresa isn’t calling the shots here, it’s the corporate entity itself that demands a focus on profit. Luckily, if a group like Carrotmob exists, we can translate good into profit. Mother Teresa COULD get away with it if she knew that in exchange for ending world hunger, Carrotmob would send more customers her way, her company’s reputation would soar, the other oil companies would struggle, and overall her company’s profits would go up. So we don’t have to worry about their motivations if we can find and embrace these mutually beneficial situations.

Q5 If someone wanted to start a Carrotmob style campaign in their home town how would they go about it? Do you have starter packs or campaign guides?

I would love to see some local campaigns get going. For now people can go to our list of cities and leave their contact info so that others can connect with them. Once we get on our feet a little more we will try to get some great resources and tools that people can use to coordinate their own campaigns. We want to have a central Carrotmob entity that deals with larger companies, and then a distributed grassroots network that uses our site to get things going in their own communities. We can do global AND local at the same time!

Q6 What other ways would you say consumers can work with businesses rather than against them to bring about change?

There is no other option. EVERYONE MUST JOIN CARROTMOB IMMEDIATELY. Ha ha. But seriously. There are a lot of options for socially responsible investing. Shareholder activism is great if you own shares of something. And people working inside companies can do a whole lot of innovation from within. Of course there are a lot of sticks out there as well. I’m advocating the carrot approach, but I don’t want us to drop our sticks and exclusively switch to carrots. It takes a team effort.

Q7 Can others join the Carrotmob movement and is there a place to share ideas?

Everyone is encouraged to join Carrotmob by visiting our site and joining the mailing list. You can also link up with us on:
Facebook
Myspace
Twitter
and Digg
You can share ideas by leaving comments all around the site or on the Facebook discussion board. The next version of the site should have a better forum for sharing.

Q8 What’s next for Carrotmob?

Ha ha, I’m working on it! At this point I still have another job part-time to pay rent, so it’d be nice to get some sort of funding so I can work full-time on this, but for now I’m thinking we will do another local campaign in another retail environment, on a larger scale. Help us spread the word and soon we will be the most powerful mob in all the land!

Thank you Brent. GGG wishes you lots of success with Carrotmob and do keep us in touch with your news.

Well you heard him, go spread the word about Carrotmob!!

www.carrotmob.org

Filed under Business, Sustainability, Shopping |