.The Corporate Co-Opt of Local

As "buy local" movements gain in strength, big-box retailers and national manufacturers are trying to redefine the terms of the debate.

HSBC, one of the biggest banks on the planet, has taken to calling
itself “the world’s local bank.” Winn-Dixie, a 500-outlet supermarket
chain, recently launched a new ad campaign under the tagline, “Local
flavor since 1956.” The International Council of Shopping Centers, a
global consortium of mall owners and developers, is pouring millions of
dollars into television ads urging people to “Shop Local” — at
their nearest mall. Even Wal-Mart is getting in on the act, hanging
bright green banners over its produce aisles that simply say,
“Local.”

Hoping to capitalize on growing public enthusiasm for all things
local, some of the world’s biggest corporations are brashly laying
claim to the word “local.”

This new variation on corporate greenwashing is, like the buy-local
movement itself, most advanced in the context of food. Hellmann’s, the
mayonnaise brand owned by the processed-food giant Unilever, is
test-driving a new “Eat Real, Eat Local” initiative in Canada. The ad
campaign seems aimed partly at enhancing the brand by simply
associating Hellmann’s with local food. But it also makes the claim
that Hellmann’s is local, because most of its ingredients come
from North America.

And the movement is now spreading well beyond food. Barnes &
Noble has launched a video blog site under the banner, “All bookselling
is local.” The site, which features “local book news” and
recommendations from employees of stores in such evocative-sounding
locales as Surprise, Arizona, and Wauwatosa, Wisconsin, seems designed
to disguise what Barnes & Noble is and to present the chain instead
as a collection of independent-minded booksellers.

Across the country, scores of shopping malls, chambers of commerce,
and economic development agencies are also appropriating the phrase
“buy local” to urge consumers to patronize nearby malls and big-box
stores. In March, leaders of a new Buy Local campaign in Fresno
assembled in front of the Fashion Fair Mall for a kick-off press
conference. Flanked by storefronts bearing brand names like
Anthropologie and The Cheesecake Factory, officials from the Economic
Development Corporation of Fresno County explained that choosing to
“buy local” helps the region’s economy. For anyone confused by this
display, the campaign and its media partners, including Comcast and the
Fresno Bee, followed the press conference with more than
$250,000 worth of radio, TV, and print ads that spelled it out: “Just
so you know, buying local means any store in your community:
mom-and-pop stores, national chains, big-box stores — you name
it.”

In one way, all of this is good news for local economy advocates: It
represents the best empirical evidence yet that the grassroots movement
for locally produced goods and independently owned businesses now
sweeping the country is having a measurable impact on the choices
people make. “Think of the millions of dollars these big companies
spend on research and focus groups,” observed Dan Cullen of the
American Booksellers Association, a trade group for independent
bookstores. “They wouldn’t be doing this on a hunch.”

Signs abound that consumer preferences are trending local. Locally
grown food has soared in popularity. The United States is now home to
4,385 active farmers’ markets, one third of which were started since
2000. Food co-ops and neighborhood greengrocers are on the rise.
Driving is down, while data from several metropolitan regions shows
that houses located within walking distance of small neighborhood
stores have held value better than those isolated in the suburbs where
the nearest gallon of milk is a five-mile drive to Target.

A growing number of independent businesses are trumpeting their
local ownership and community roots, and reporting a surge in customer
traffic as a result. In April, even as Virgin Megastores prepared to
shutter its last US record store, independent music stores across the
country were mobbed for the second annual Record Store Day. A
celebration of local music retailers that featured in-store concerts
and exclusive releases, the event drew hundreds of thousands of music
fans into stores, was one of the top search terms on Google, and
triggered a sixteen-point upswing in album sales, according to Neilson
SoundScan.

In city after city, independent businesses are organizing and
creating what could become a powerful counterweight to the big business
lobbies that have long dominated public policy. Local business
alliances — like Stay Local in New Orleans, the Metro Independent
Business Alliance in Minneapolis-St. Paul, and Arizona Local First in
Phoenix — have now formed in more than 130 cities and
collectively count some 30,000 businesses as members. Through
grassroots “buy local” and “local first” campaigns, these alliances are
calling on people to choose independent businesses and local products
more often and making the case that doing so is critical to rebuilding
middle-class prosperity and ensuring that our daily lives are not
smothered by corporate uniformity.

Surveys and anecdotal reports from business owners suggest these
initiatives are changing spending patterns. A survey of 1,100
independent retailers conducted in January by the Institute for Local
Self-Reliance found that, amid the worst economic downturn since the
Depression, buy-local sentiment is giving local businesses an edge over
their chain competitors. While the Commerce Department reported that
retail sales plunged almost 10 percent over the holidays, the survey
found that independent retailers in cities with buy-local campaigns saw
sales drop an average of just 3 percent.

None of this has escaped the notice of corporate executives and the
consumer research firms that advise them. Several of these firms have
begun to track the localization trend. In its annual consumer survey,
the New York-based branding firm BBMG found that the number of people
reporting that it was “very important” to them whether a product was
grown or produced locally jumped from 26 to 32 percent in the last year
alone.

“Food is one of the biggest gateways, but we’re seeing this idea of
‘local’ spread across other categories and sectors,” said Michelle
Barry, senior vice president of the Hartman Group. A report published
by Hartman last year noted, “There is a belief that you can only be
local if you are a small and authentic brand. This isn’t necessarily
true; big brands can use the notion of local to their advantage as
well.” Barry added: “Big companies have to be much more creative in how
they articulate local. … It’s a different way of thinking about local
that is not quite as literal.”

One way corporations can be “local” is by stocking a token amount of
locally grown produce, as Wal-Mart has done in some of its
supercenters. The chain’s local food offerings are usually limited to a
few of the main commodity crops of that particular state —
peaches in Georgia or potatoes in Maine — and sit amid a sea of
industrial food and other goods shipped from the far side of the
planet. Yet, this modest gesture has won Wal-Mart glowing coverage in
numerous daily newspapers.

Wal-Mart, like other chains, has learned that, with consumers
increasingly motivated to support companies they perceive to be acting
responsibly, tossing around the word “local” is a far less expensive
way to convey civic virtue than the alternatives. “Local is one of the
lower-hanging fruits in terms of sustainability,” Barry said. “It’s
easier for companies to do than to improve how their employees are
treated or adopt a specific sustainability practice around their carbon
footprint, for example.”

Other companies are pushing marketing messages that work by
association. One example that caught Dan Cullen’s eye was a CVS
television commercial that begins in a Main Street bookshop, following
the owner around as she tends to her customers. The bookshop then
transforms into a CVS. The bookshop owner is now the customer. The feel
is still very much Main Street. “Suddenly the kind of unique,
enjoyable, grassroots bookstore experience morphs into a CVS
experience,” Cullen said. “There’s a Potemkin facade that a lot of
chains are trying to put up because consumers now want something other
than a cookie-cutter experience.”

Still another corporate strategy is to redefine the term “local” to
mean, not locally owned or locally produced, but just nearby. “With the
term ‘local’ being so nebulous, it seems ripe for manipulation,” noted
Mintel, another consumer research firm that counsels companies on how
to “craft marketing messages that appeal to locally conscious
consumers” and how to avoid “charges of ‘local washing.'”

Corporate-oriented buy-local campaigns that define “local” as the
nearest Lowe’s or Gap store are now being rolled out in cities
nationwide. Some represent desperate bids by shopping malls to survive
the recession and fend off online competition. Others are the work of
chambers of commerce trying to remain relevant. Still others are the
half-baked plans of municipal officials casting about for some way to
stop the steep drop in sales tax revenue.

Many of these Astroturf campaigns are modeled directly on grassroots
initiatives. “They copy our language and tactics,” said Michelle Long,
executive director of Sustainable Connections, a seven-year-old
coalition of 600 independent businesses in northwest Washington state
that runs a very visible and successful “local first” program. “I get
calls from chambers and other groups who say, ‘We want to do what you
are doing. It took me a while to realize that what they had in mind was
not what we do.’ Once I realized, I started asking them, what do you
mean by ‘local’?”

Examples abound. In Northern California, the Arcata Chamber of
Commerce is producing “Shop Local” ads that look similar to the
Humboldt County Independent Business Alliance’s “Go Local” ads, except
they feature both independents and chains. Spokane’s Buy Local program,
started by the local chamber, is open to any business in town,
including big-box stores. Logon to the Buy Local web site created by
the chamber in Chapel Hill, North Carolina, and you will find Wal-Mart
among the listings.

When billboards proclaiming “Buy Local Orlando” first appeared in
Orlando, Florida, Julie Norris, a cafe owner who last year co-founded
Ourlando, an initiative to support indie businesses, was excited to see
the concept getting such visibility. But she soon realized that the
city-funded program, which provides businesses who join with a “Buy
Local” decal, seminars at the Disney Entrepreneur Center, and a listing
on the web site, was open to any business in Orlando. “We sat down with
the city and said, ‘What you guys are doing is a real disservice to the
local business movement,'” she said.

The city did agree to remove from its press materials and web site a
reference to a study that found that, for every $100 spent locally, $45
stays in the community. The problem was that the study, conducted by
the firm Civic Economics, found that to be true only if the money was
spent at a locally owned business. Shop at a chain store, the analysis
found, and only $13 of that $100 spent stays in the community.

The Economic Development Corporation of Fresno County also
appropriated the $45-stays-local statistic when it kicked off its Buy
Local campaign at the Fashion Fair Mall. The figure was repeated on a
TV news story without any clarification that it did not apply to the
types of chains visible in the background. Like the Orlando initiative,
the Fresno campaign aims to boost sales tax revenue by deterring online
and out-of-town shopping. It goes out of its way in every radio and TV
spot to make sure people know that “local” means national chains and
big-box stores. “Buy Local” stickers and posters are now visible on
malls and chains throughout the Central Valley. “For someone to say you
are not local if you are a big box, I say baloney,” explained Steve
Geil, CEO of the Economic Development Corporation. “They invested
here.”

When the City of Santa Fe decided to launch a campaign to encourage
people to shop locally, the Santa Fe Alliance, a coalition of more than
500 locally owned businesses that has been running a buy-local
initiative for several years, signed on. But the city’s message,
according to Kate Noble, a city staffer who runs the program, is that
shopping at Wal-Mart is fine, as long as it’s not Walmart.com. “It has only diluted our message
and confused people,” complained Vicki Pozzebon, director of the
Alliance. “The city asked me not to push the $45 versus $13, but just
say ‘local,'” she added.

These sales-tax-driven campaigns may well be doing more harm to
local economies than good, according to Jeff Milchen, co-founder of the
American Independent Business Alliance, a national organization that
helps communities start and grow local business alliances. “If you
encourage people to shop at a big-box store that takes sales away from
an independent business, you’re just funneling more dollars out of
town, because, unlike chains, local businesses buy lots of goods and
services, like accounting and printing, from other local
businesses.”

The irony of trying to solve declining city revenue by trying to get
people to shop at the local mall is that the mall itself may be the
problem. While many California cities are facing budget cuts and even
bankruptcy, Berkeley has managed to post a small increase in revenue.
Part of the reason, according to city officials, is that Berkeley has
more or less said no to shopping malls and big chain stores and is
instead a city of locally owned businesses that primarily serve local
residents. That creates a much more stable revenue base. Berkeley
hasn’t benefited from the temporary boom that a new regional mall might
create, but neither has it gone bust.

Can corporations succeed in co-opting or so muddling the term local
that it no longer has meaning? The Hartman Group’s Barry thinks that’s
possible. “For many consumers, these things are not being called into
question much. They say, ‘Hey, it’s my local Wal-Mart or my local
Frito-Lay truck.’ It depends where you are on the continuum and how you
define local, which is a term that is really up for grabs.”

Milchen is less concerned about what he calls faux-local campaigns
in cities where there is already a strong local business organization.
“It’s more of an educational opportunity than a problem, so long as
they respond to it,” he said. But in places where local enterprises are
not organized, he fears these corporate campaigns may succeed in
permanently defining “local” for their own benefit. Michelle Long
shares that concern: “That’s my fear. People are going to do diluted
versions and hold the space so that real campaigns don’t get
started.”

Such dilution has prompted local business advocates to reconsider
their language. Many are now using the word “independent” more than
“local.” Controlling language is critical, said Ronnie Cummins,
director of the Organic Consumers Association, who is pushing for
tighter regulation of the word organic, as well as rules governing
terms like natural, sustainable, and local. “We’ve been fighting so
long without the help of federal regulators that some people have
forgotten that tool.”

Perhaps all of this will ultimately make corporations even more
suspect and further the case for shifting our economy in the direction
of small-scale, local, and independent. “I think the fact that the
chains are trying to play the local card, in a way makes it easier for
us,” said Cullen of the American Booksellers Association. “I think
people are going to recognize that these aren’t authentic and that’s
going to make the real thing all the more powerful.”

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