The results are in and Vancouver’s first Carrotmob was a success.
The Carrotmob movement is a new type of ad-hoc community activism in which businesses in a local area compete at how socially or environmentally responsible they can be.
The winner is rewarded by a Carrotmob: consumers converge at their location on a given day to boost that day’s store revenue.
Last Sunday, between 100 and 150 Vancouverites carrotmobbed Salt Spring Coffee on Main Street, helping to increase a typical Sunday’s revenue at the café by 60%.
Salt Spring, which competed with four other coffee shops on Main Street, pledged through an online video contest to direct 110% of the day’s revenue, which was $1,623, toward improving its energy efficiency.
Emily Jubenvill, an organizer of Carrotmob Vancouver and a co-founder of Small Feet Inc., which is a consultancy that helps business reduce their footprint, told BIV Thursday night that the Carrotmob movement is about empowering small businesses and consumers.
“A lot of the policy work that happens at the provincial and national level is related to the big emitters – the big industrial and commercial producers.Each small business may have a very small impact, but all of them together have a really big impact in terms of their resources used, waste produced and the people they reach.”
She said Carrotmob Vancouver organizers are meeting in June to decide if and when there will be another Carrotmob in the city.