What's the opposite of a boycott?
The answer is a "carrotmob".
Imagine going around to the shopkeepers in your neighbourhood and asking them what percentage of their sales they would be willing to invest in improving their energy efficiency. Identify the highest bidder and, using social media, you mobilise the local community to "mob" their shop on a mutually agreed date. Document everything on YouTube and get others to repeat the experiment around the world.
Corporate social responsibility and activism, the development 2.0 way. (Via the Guardian)
P.S. As well as being the opposite of a boycott, carrotmobs might also be an antidote to "slacktivism".
Update: Check out the video below for an example of just how a carrotmob works in practice.
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I remember doing work on Green Consumerism in the 1990s. It seemed promising, but it did not really work, or at least not in terms of interfirm competition. Rather, some of these concerns became somewhat integrated on the demand side: it did NOT happen that one "green" supermarket chain emerged, it DID happen that all chains now offer an organic line of product. Can our heroes make it happen this time around? The video's fun though.
Posted by: Alberto Cottica | Jun 1, 2009 6:11:06 AM