Community Action – How to Play A Positive Role In Your Local Community

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We live in an increasingly globalized world, where instant communication is possible between continents and where you can buy goods with one click of the button from anywhere in the world.

Online Communities

Counter intuitively the word community has never seemed to be so important in marketing jargon. We see it in 'online communities' as brands seek to build a social media follower based on Twitter and Facebook. And we also see it in the old fashioned sense as firms try to connect with their local customers.

Indeed, for all the global communications now at our disposal, consumers feel an increasing need to embrace their local communities. We see this in the growing enthusiasm for locally sourced food, and in various programmes designed to support local communities. An example of this is Foursquare, an online app which allows people to check in to locations and earn reward points based on their support of local businesses.

Supporting Local Businesses

Major retailers such as Tesco and Sainsbury, are getting in on the act, placing locally sourced food and drink in their regional outlets. Others are promoting their status as positive citizens in a global community.  Multinational corporations such as Coca Cola are funding projects designed to support communities globally. These include 5by20, a scheme to create employment and education opportunities for women around the world, to the Legacy 365 campaign which aims to develop more sporting opportunities in communities among disadvantages communities.

Such projects require the kind of investment that only a major multinational such as Coca Cola is equipped to deliver, but small and medium sized companies can create the same thing, albeit on a much smaller scale. Indeed, smaller companies are equipped to engage with their local communities in a way that larger firms simply cannot.

Ways to do this vary. They can create incentive schemes that encourage you to shop in the local area as well as becoming active in community development groups. Small local businesses can be seen sponsoring everything from local football teams, to events, and rural development groups. An example of a possible campaign would be to fund a program aiming to improve the local environment, or create new green spaces.

This goes much further than traditional forms of advertising which themselves have become out dated and ineffective. Falling sales have seen local newspapers reach a crisis point, while the effectiveness of radio advertising is highly questionable.

Local Participation

This more proactive approach allows firms to be seen as becoming positive participants in the local area and naturally increases the sense of engagement people see. Local people no longer naturally congregate in the local hall or the church so there is an opportunity for local brands to become leaders in their local area and fill that void.

So, for all that technology has done and continues to do in creating an increasingly globalized world, people are beginning to look inward at the physical local communities they can see, touch and feel.

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