Support the place you love — Shop Local Campaign.
I have friends and family who live in the country who can’t imagine moving to a big city. The quiet streets, nature and the sense of community — I can’t disagree with them. Walking down the street in a small town is filled with head nods, hellos and a conversation or two with someone you know. Everyone knows everyone — people support small. Big cities, on the other hand, don’t seem to have that sort of friendliness or community. Well, at least that’s what I thought.
The Brief
Help small business recover by encouraging residents to shop local.
The Brand
We needed something colourful and bold — maybe a little messy too.
The People
We wanted to create a personal connection between business owners and the community — meet the faces behind the counter. With a short deadline, we lined up a number of interviews with small businesses in the area.
From the interviews, we gathered key quotes from each of the business and took some portrait photos.
(This was before mask were advised – looking back it seems a little silly that we weren’t wearing masks for the very start.)
We used the portraits and the quotes from the interviews to create a series of posters.
Thanks, Plakkit for always being the best.
We also created a social media campaign to accompany the posters.
And then there was a roadblock…
In the middle of the campaign, Moreland became a hotspot for COVID-19 resulting in a number of suburbs in the area going back into lockdown. Since our focus was to encourage residents to get out and support local, small businesses — we had to rethink our message until the lockdown had passed.
Supporting local, from home.
We launched a number of social media posts, encouraging people to support businesses who are suffering from lockdown. Letting the public know that they can still help.
An online Directory
People knew that they needed to shop local, but who should they support? Google is great at most things; cat videos, getting directions, recipes. But it can sometimes be a bit of a pain to find local businesses — especially those who are not so tech-savvy.
So we built a microsite, complete with an online directory with the help from Alpacca Maps. Complete in 4 different languages too!
The campaign lives on
What started out as a campaign in response to the epidemic. The Love Moreland, Buy Local campaign has grown legs and has begun to walk on its own. A new subbrand has emerged to support hospitality businesses called Love Moreland Dine Local and we are continuing to run interviews and content pieces with local businesses.
Throughout this whole process, the most amazing this has been the support that people show for others. Locals support their local (understandably), but people have gone out of their way to support those who have been hit harder than themselves. I think that is the most special part of this project.
The generosity, support and kindness of your neighbours.
