The dirty tricks behind local-washing
8 JUL 2009 • by Stacy Mitchell
Stacy Mitchell is a senior researcher with the New Rules Project (http://www.newrules.org) and author of Big-Box Swindle: The True Cost of Mega-Retailers and the Fight for America's Independent Businesses (Beacon, 2006). She works for the Institute for Local Self-Reliance. Send your examples of local-washing to her at smitchell@ilsr.org.

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 Walmart is getting in on the act, hanging bright green banners over its produce aisles that simply say "Local."


Photo by Jeremy M. Lange

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.

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." The site, which features "local book news" and recommendations from employees of stores in such evocative-sounding locales as Surprise, Ariz., and Wauwatosa, Wis., seems designed to disguise what Barnes & Noble is—a highly centralized corporation where decisions about what books to stock and feature are made by a handful of buyers—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, Calif., 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.

"Think of the millions of dollars these big companies spend on research and focus groups. They wouldn't be doing this on a hunch," observed Dan Cullen of the American Booksellers Association (ABA), a trade group which represents some 1,700 independent bookstores and last year launched IndieBound, an initiative that helps locally owned businesses communicate their independence and community roots.

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. Driving is down, while data from several metropolitan regions show 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 U.S. record store, independent music stores across the country were mobbed for the second annual Record Store Day. A celebration of local music retailers that features 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 16-point upswing in album sales, according to Nielsen SoundScan.

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 like Stay Local in New Orleans, the Metro Independent Business Alliance in Minneapolis-St Paul and Arizona Local First in Phoenix have 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, averting environmental collapse and ensuring that our daily lives are not smothered by corporate uniformity.

Corporations Take Note

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. "It's not just a small cadre of consumers anymore," said founding partner Mitch Baranowski.

"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" is to stock a token amount of locally grown produce, as Walmart 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 Walmart glowing coverage in numerous daily newspapers, few of which have asked the salient question: Does Walmart, 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?

Walmart, 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."

Rather than making direct claims using the word "local," some 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," said Cullen. "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."

Redefining Local

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," notes 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.'" The key, Mintel says, is for companies to decide what they mean by local and to disclose that clearly so as not to be accused of trying to misappropriate the term.

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, according to market research, very 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. Log on to the Buy Local Web site created by the chamber in Chapel Hill and you will find Walmart and Costco among the listings.

When billboards proclaiming "Buy Local Orlando" first appeared in Orlando, Fla., Julie Norris, a café 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 Orlando 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, according to the study, conducted by the firm Civic Economics, the figure was accurate 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 in a TV news story without any clarification that it did not apply to the chain stores 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 Walmart 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 versus $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 so muddling the term 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 Walmart 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. "I think the fact that the chains are trying to play the local card, in a way, makes it easier for us," said the ABA's Cullen. "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."

Those fees and the products that national chains sell all funnel money out of a local economy.

When they say that only $13 dollars spent at national chains stays "in the community," what exactly do they mean by that phrase? Have they considered what happens to the extra money that people in the community save by shopping at Wal Mart? Shouldn't that be counted among the dollars that stay "in the community?" And even barring that, what do they think happens to the money that goes to those greedy corporate easy targets bigwigs in New York and other places? Do they think those people just stuff the money under their mattresses?

When they say that only $13 dollars spent at national chains stays "in the community," what exactly do they mean by that phrase? Have they considered what happens to the extra money that people in the community save by shopping at Wal Mart? Shouldn't that be counted among the dollars that stay "in the community?" And even barring that, what do they think happens to the money that goes to those greedy corporate easy targets bigwigs in New York and other places? Do they think those people just stuff the money under their mattresses?

Savings isn't always better at local chains. Walmart, sure, but when was the last time you saved money shopping at Barnes & Noble?

I think the "greedy corporate bigwigs" reinvest that money in Asian-manufactured goods, Saudi Arabian oil, and food from massive agri-businesses in the US and/or Chile, depending on the season.

Of course, all of that avoids the point that Americans are, more and more, deciding that (for whatever reason) they'd like to spend their money in locally-owned, independent stores, and corporate chains are finding ways to deceive them and keep them from doing that.

Do you honestly think anyone is deceived into thinking that Wal Mart is a local chain?

Do you honestly think corporations would spend money on these ads if they didn't work? No one thinks Wal-Mart is a local chain, but that's not what WalMart is claiming, is it?

First off, I save money all the time at B+N. But to answer your broader question, if people aren't saving money at the big chains, why can't local stores compete? B, the main argument that anti-Wal Mart, B+N, etc people make is that they are so big that they can afford to charge less for goods than local businesses and end up driving the little guys out of business. Otherwise, what is it about B+N that makes people want to go there rather than Ye Olde Tiny Book Shoppe down the street?

Of course, all of that avoids the point that Americans are, more and more, deciding that (for whatever reason) they'd like to spend their money in locally-owned, independent stores, and corporate chains are finding ways to deceive them and keep them from doing that.

The way I read it, if I give Wal-Mart $100, $13 of those dollars are spent by Wal-Mart on products in my community (a sale that is taxed by my county).

Savings isn't always better at local chains. Walmart, sure, but when was the last time you saved money shopping at Barnes & Noble? It's a limitation to the study, but I don't think it nulifies the result. Especially if the money that is saved at a national chain is then reinvested in a national chain. It would just continue to be diluted.

I think the "greedy corporate bigwigs" reinvest that money in Asian-manufactured goods, Saudi Arabian oil, and food from massive agri-businesses in the US and/or Chile, depending on the season.

B, what is your understanding of how economies grow? what is your understanding of how societies become wealthy?

bart's pretty much got this thread on lock-down.

to piggy back off what he said, though, if americans really wanted to spend their money in locally owned, independent stores, then corporate chains wouldn't have the market share they do. what people want is to be able to claim they're concerned with local affairs, that they support "independent" business. that corporations successfully co-opt the "local" brand - and all the silly, self-satisfied sociological and cultural norms that tell us that everything local is good, and everything that isn't local is a nameless, faceless, soul-sucking, corporate automaton - only tells us that people think it's important to project to others an image of "conscientious consumer."

if americans really wanted to spend their money in locally owned, independent stores (and not corporate chains), then the locally owned, independent store would be the dominant business model. the corporate model dominates because consumers place a higher value on the larger selections and lower prices that big box chains can offer.

If that's all true, then why are all the national corporations in the above article spending money on the perception that they're normal? If people don't really care and they aren't starting to spend their money on local products, then big box chains can only be wasting money. That's one thing that everyone in this thread can agree that big box chains DO NOT ever do.

Folks, I encourage you to ignore this foolish campaign and patronize your

friendly LOCAL .




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