‘The Lady Doth Protest Too Much’ … The Generation Y Take on Consumer Activism

13 October 2009

In the early 1990’s, there was rarely a weekend that went by that I was not carrying a placard to protest against something: student loans, nuclear proliferation, the Poll Tax, death of the NHS, solidarity with the miners.

As a Gen X’er, I have enjoyed the resurgence of consumer protest in the latter half of the decade: a million people marching on Hyde Park to protest against the war in Iraq; the City of London brought to a standstill by anti-capitalist protesters during the G8 Summit. Only yesterday, we watched from the window of a meeting at HMRC while Greenpeace protesters scaled the roof of the Houses of Parliament.

Last week, I was at the American Marketing Association Research Conference in Palm Springs. The theme was ‘Making Business Sense of What’s Next’.

One of the most interesting emerging trends was introduced to by Tom Laforge, Global Director of Insights, Creativity and Ideas, The Coca Cola Company. He was talking about the power of using social history to predict the future. One of the trends he focused on was the growth of positive consumer action.

After decades of trying to change through protest, the millennial generation is turning away from sanction and towards reward – dangling the carrot as opposed to wielding the stick. For generation Y, consumer choice is a positive force – don’t protest against capitalism, make it work for you and your ideals.

At Intrepid we’ve been talking about the importance of a fair exchange between individual customers and brands for a number of years. Millenials are taking this to its logical extreme: businesses want to make money, Generation Y wants to do business with ethical, environmentally friendly businesses: consumer power can be used positively to promote change. This growing social phenomena has become known as a Carrot Mob.

What is a carrot mob?

If you have 2 minutes to spare, this short animation explains the Carrot Mob principle beautifully.

Better still, if you have a few more minutes to spare; this video show the first ever Carrot Mob positive action in San Francisco this time last year.

The story is that an individual environmentalist decided to exploit his immediate social network and their connections to promote positive action. He approached every convenience store in his local neighborhood and gave them an opportunity to bid to be the first store to be promoted as a business that was willing to make environmental changes in return for increased business from the local community. The winner committed to donate 22% of all increased revenue to improve their refrigeration units and insulation within the store, significantly reducing their carbon emissions.

The Fair Exchange was simple – the ‘Mob’ bought things they needed anyway (just from a different local location), the store generated four times its average daily revenue, and the environment benefited in the long term.

There are now active Carrot Mobs all across America and CarrotMob UK is on its second positive action – unsurprisingly for the UK’s first action was to find a bar in SoHo that would commit to delivering environmental improvements in return for a ‘Mob’ visit – they did and the night was a huge success.

Carrot Mobbings are promoted through Facebook groups, Twitter feeds and the hub of the movement is found at www.carrotmob.org where they clearly set out their manifesto for the future for businesses and consumers to work together.

It may be an emerging trend right now but it is a trend that aligns with the values and priorities that define the Millennial generation.

I agree with Tom LaForge that the businesses of the future will be the ones who understand and genuinely embrace the principle that there is a ‘Win-Win’ situation for consumers, businesses and society as a whole.

Carrot Mobs may be driven by environmentalism today but I predict that the principle of the carrot and not the stick will be a trend that crops up in many more areas over the next decade. I wonder where else this principle could be as successful – thinking about my client portfolio, taxation is definitely one place that makes sense – but where else? Any thoughts would be welcome.

In the mean time, I think I will be consigning my placards to the recycling and embracing a more positive approach to make my consumer vote count.

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