| Main Feature Story - Friday, July 17, 2009
Feature: The big-box shop around the corner
Businesses go into spin cycle as corporations try to redefine 'local'
by Stacy Mitchell
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—local washing—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.
It's not the only industrial food company muscling in on local. Frito-Lay's new television commercials use farmers as pitchmen to position the company's potato chips as local food, while Foster Farms, one of the largest producers of poultry products in the country, is labeling packages of chicken and turkey "locally grown."
Corporate local-washing is now spreading well beyond food. Barnes & Noble, the world's top seller of books, has launched a video blog site under the banner "All bookselling is local." And, like at many of its locations, the Barnes & Noble in the Corte Madera Town Center hopes to dig its community roots into Marin through a "local authors" section, which boasts about 20 titles amid the thousands of books lining the walls. Both Barnes & Noble and the San Rafael Borders offer shelves of "local" themed, sepia-tinted Images of America collections—historic photos of West Marin, San Rafael and the Tiburon Peninsula—produced by the Arcadia publishing company in South Carolina.
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 kickoff 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 McClatchy-owned 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."
The real buy local movement
In one way, all of this corporate local-washing 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.
Signs that consumer preferences are trending local abound. Locally grown food has soared in popularity. The U.S. is now home to 4,385 active farmers markets, one out of every three of which was started since 2000. Food co-ops and neighborhood greengrocers are on the rise. Neighborhood stores are closely monitoring where the food they sell is grown. Good Earth Natural Foods in Fairfax, for instance, counted its June tally of local produce at 32 percent—that is, 53 of its 166 produce-department items were grown within 100 miles of the store.
"We drew a 100-mile circle around the store and decided that anything outside of 100 miles, we're not going to term 'local,'" said Good Earth partner Al Baylacq, whose store also prints the mileage traveled on its produce signs. "But one of the biggest questions is, Who's defining 'local'?"
In city after city, independent businesses are organizing and creating the beginnings of what could become a powerful counterweight to the big business lobbies that have long dominated public policy. Local business alliances have now formed in over 130 cities and collectively count some 30,000 businesses as members. Chambers of commerce in Sausalito, Corte Madera and Mill Valley all have "official" shop-local campaigns. Similar efforts in San Rafael, San Anselmo, Novato, Tiburon and Fairfax have started rolling as well. 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, averting environmental collapse and ensuring that our daily lives are not smothered by corporate uniformity.
Surveys and anecdotal reports from business owners suggest that these initiatives are in fact changing spending patterns. A survey of 1,100 independent retailers conducted in January by the Institute for Local Self-Reliance (where I work) 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 overall 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 from the previous year. Many respondents attributed this relative good fortune to the fact that more people are deliberately seeking out locally owned businesses.
Corporations take note
None of this has slipped 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 explains: "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" too is to stock 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, few of which have asked the salient question: Does Wal-Mart, which now captures more than one of every five dollars Americans spend on groceries, create more and better opportunities for local farmers than the grocers it replaces?
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," explains Barry. "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."
Good Earth's Baylacq was astounded recently when a nearby competitor distributed a flyer promoting Crystal Geyser bottled water with a "local" sticker brandished across the product.
"I'm sure it's probably [bottled] here in California, but the whole idea of being local—Crystal Geyser's a huge company," said Baylacq. "And to think that they're putting water in plastic and moving it around the planet—and right next to it is Straus Creamery yogurt which has a local thing on it and is deserving."
Redefining local
Still another corporate strategy is to redefine the term "local" to mean, not locally owned or locally produced, but just nearby.
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.
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. Log on to the Buy Local Web site created by the chamber in Chapel Hill, North Carolina, and you will find Wal-Mart among the listings.
Even here in Marin the line between corporate and local is blurring. The Corte Madera Chamber of Commerce recently kicked off its "Play, Eat & Stay in Corte Madera" campaign with a float in the city's lauded Fourth of July parade. But, as a chamber spokesperson cryptically told the Sun, that includes "any business in Corte Madera, not just small businesses."
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 that 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. When Norris complained publicly, city officials accused Ourlando of being "exclusive" by not allowing chains.
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 (EDC) 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. They invested here," explained Steve Geil, CEO of the EDC.
"I would prefer that the county's resources were not being spent promoting Wal-Mart and Home Depot," said Scott Miller, owner of Gazebo Gardens, a plant nursery founded in 1922. "We have a great history of being involved in community events and donating to local causes. Our plants are grown locally. We believe that our kind of business is more valuable to a community than any big chain."
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. At the kickoff in March, the Alliance's director, Vicki Pozzebon, emphasized the economic impact of shopping at a locally owned business versus a chain. "After that, the city asked me not to push the $45 vs. $13, but just say 'local,'" said Pozzebon. 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. Pozzebon said, "It has only diluted our message and confused people."
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 (and on whose board I serve). "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.
Will big local triumph?
Can corporations succeed in co-opting "local"—or at least in muddling the term so 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."
Local-washing 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."
But perhaps local-washing will ultimately make corporations even more suspect and further the case for shifting our economy more in the direction of small-scale, local and independent. "It's all about the sustainability of it—the sustainability lends itself to a better regionally driven economic system," said Baylacq. "If the dollars you earn stay in your community, it just comes back to you in other ways, whether it's schools to your own business, etc. I certainly am likely to be in a growing majority mindset of supporting local businesses—in the end we'll be better off for it in our communities."
Stacy Mitchell is the author of 'Big-Box Swindle: The True Cost of Mega-Retailers and the Fight for America's Independent Businesses' (Beacon, 2006). Send your examples of local-washing to us at letters@pacificsun.com. |
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