Do ‘Shop Local’ campaigns work? It was a question asked of me last week. After some thought I said, “if done well”. After all, the motivation behind a Shop Local campaign is to get more money circulating within a community to stimulate job growth, investment, greater variety of offerings; all integral to the continual strength of a community. If done well this message should trigger sufficient locals to consider and change where they make their purchases. When pressed on what ‘done well’ meant, I asked what he considered to be local. The response was basically brick and mortar retail shops. Some locally owned, some franchisees and some multi-nationals. All have a store presence in Rockhampton, all hire locals, all offer a variety of offerings and all have made an investment here, thus all rightfully considered a local business! But does everyone see it this way? Is the Sunday afternoon trip to Bunnings a local buy? Getting the bread and milk at Woolies a local buy? How many stores in Stockland do you identify as ‘local’? And what about non-retail businesses; one’s that operate from offices, homes, or purely online. Shouldn’t they also be included in a Shop Local campaign. Don’t address these issues and a Shop Local campaign isn’t being built on a good platform. Then there is the convenience of shopping on the internet to tackle. You can encourage locals to search for local stores with online shopping facilities, but the better resourced internationals can turn that intention around. If you haven’t already, Google Dick Smith’s rant about online accommodation booking sites; it highlights the challenges family run businesses encounter trying to improve their online rankings (and to make a profit). And if a trip for a north sider to Stockland is more convenient than going to East Street to buy a dress, is this considered a shop local success, as it wasn’t bought online? Anyway, if your kids are employed or you’re not hustling a local business to sponsor your daughters football team, do you really pay more than lip service to a shop local campaign? Any good advertising campaign, that is not focused on the lowest price, attempts to make an emotional connection with every member of the audience. A Shop Local campaign needs to educate as well as make an emotional connection. Getting the local Coles Manager talking about how many local teenagers they’ve given opportunities to, may not make that emotional connection to broadly shop local. A Shop Local campaign needs to feature, what most people relate as being, ‘real locals’, telling their story. Stories so well told (and presented) that they get people feeling they are contributing to that persons dream by purchasing their products or services. Sound cheesy, to some it will, but if you’ve heard stories that go deeper than the who they are, what they do and how they do it, to why they do it; then the genuine ones make an emotional connection, winning over more likes than dislikes, thus opening the door for new business relationships. Bit more to it than a bumper sticker campaign saying ‘Shop Local’ for a campaign to work. Daunting, but like any challenge you take one step at a time. The first possibly being (if applicable), don’t call it Shop Local, identify as an Independent Business (Indie), not just a local; take the public uncertainty of what is local or not out of the equation and tap into the growing social movement that prizes individual creativity. Then start telling your story; being an Indie, it is going to be unique and that’s what makes it interesting and hopefully engaging.