The Carrot Project

Not yet. Right now we’re trying to post only the crunchy practices that have been recognized and applauded by outside experts.

You think we ought to have a special place for each company and the crunchy things they TALK ABOUT doing?

it doesn’t necessarily have to be a special section, maybe just a title or link that allows the user the option of seeing how the company presents itself in terms of crunchiness

This is a good suggestion. I think I might take it and mold it into a way to test probably the oldest revenue model we ever discussed for this projects: advertorials.

Ever since I started working on this thing, I’ve been curious to know if companies would be interested in having their own little spaces on this site where they could give their pitch on why people ought to be supporting them and then field and respond to users that might have questions or doubts or expletive laden explosions for them.

Maybe we could test that concept out a little by looking at a company’s marketing efforts and translating it into a little manifesto. Why Adidas thinks they are the crunchiest of the crunchy, for example.

Make sense? Anyone have any thoughts?

Thanks for getting this thought started Jason.

I think a section devoted to evaluating how they present themselves would be interesting. Link to the page and then “fisk” them.

Might be interesting for companies to rate themselves and allow others to comment. This way they would have to be sure they were being honest. Companies will only pay for doing things if they see value, so if they want others to see them, you’ll have to demonstrate traffic volumes, user profiles etc.

Rate themselves relatively against the competition? Or against some “what is possible” benchmark maybe? Or just identify the crunchy things they’re doing that they think consumers ought to take into consideration?

Do you have a specific vision for this, or was that just the beginnings of an idea?

I ask because I’ve been trying to figure out how we might fake this, how we might be able to get little “marketing pages” up for the companies and simulate a situation in which we have the traffic to attract the companies to participate.

This is just the beginning of an idea… but I’m sure there is something in here… There is a “management tool” that’s gained a lot of credibility out there that’s called the Balanced Scorecard. It’s essentially a way for the management of companies to assess themselves as an organization rather than on purely financial terms. I was thinking about something similar but with a crunchy angle. I’m pretty sure one could fake a page that was based upon an outside assessment and then put up for discussion. Interestingly you could also set it up for different departments or brands within a particular organization. I need to think it through and start to sketch out what it would look like.

Having a section for the companies to speak up probably does make sense. It would be good to provide a way for companies to add their voice to the mix (along lines of the “Balanced Scorecard” idea that Oliver mentioned). And it would also be helpful to members to see what the other side has to say.

Hell, you might even be able to get companies to pay for this privilege.

I like this, guys. There is definitely something in here. Keep sketching Oliver. I’ll be doing the same.