Carrotmob - A Cool Idea
by Michael HoffmanWednesday, March 26th, 2008
Check out this new idea in civic action. It’s called Carrotmob and the idea is simple. A whole group of people shows up at a store on the same day and buys things. In exchange, the store uses the profits from that day to upgrade to more environmentally friendly systems.
People are itching to DO SOMETHING more than click to send a [increasingly meaningless] email to their Member of Congress.
Of course this is happening in San Francisco.
Carrotmob’s first campaign will begin on Saturday, March 29th at 1pm. At that time, our mob will physically manifest for the first time, meeting at K & D Market, on 16th St between Valencia and Guerrero in San Francisco. We will buy as much as we can from this store. We will collect all the receipts and keep track of the total gross revenue that we bring to the store. Then, K & D Market will take 22% of that amount and spend it all on upgrades to make their store more environmentally-friendly and energy-efficient. We all buy our usual products at the usual prices, but suddenly almost a quarter of our money goes directly towards fighting global warming. K & D Market has generously committed this impressive amount of money with the hope that Carrotmob will be able to offer them real value in return. If the mob shows up, we’ll revolutionize their store and finally get rid of their big white fridge that’s been sucking down gobs of power since the early 80s. More info coming later, save the date!
Thanks EarthFirst
