In a report last week someone stated local is the new green. And that makes more sense to me than all the stories of products made from sustainable goods. Local is the only way to go from my perspective. “Back in the day” each town was sustained by the work and goods of all the area’s residents and businesses.

A survey of closed businesses in the small South Carolina towns I drive through along U.S. 178 tells the story. One can see shuttered local banks, local groceries, even cold storage facilities for homes where there were no deep freeze units (anybody remember that?) and local department stores. Few and far between are the open businesses that are strictly local.

I come from a family that owned Coca-Cola bottling plants in the South. We had plants in Dorchester and Allendale Counties, South Carolina and some in Missouri. The bottom of the bottles even had the town name on them from which they were produced. Today, you would be hard pressed to find a locally bottled Coke–they’re all regionally bottled by larger Coke bottlers–few to none are the local, family owned bottling plants.

The same goes for flour. Every region had flour mills and people purchased their own flour or took their wheat to be ground. Today in South Carolina there are a few left that make really great Southern soft wheat flour. The slow food movement is celebrating and promoting the development of opportunities to buy local, cook local, eat local. The rise of farmers’ markets in all areas shows us that there is a desire for locally produced vegetables, meats and other foods.

I believe that it’s the same for all business activities. In the advertising and marketing world, many feel that if it comes from a huge national company it’s credible. I believe that if it comes from a local strategic marketing firm that has “local knowledge” that the message can be more credible.

So, all you entrepreneurs and business owners who believe that going out of your own market to the bigger firms, ask yourself this, “Does that out-of-market-big-ad-PR-firm really know your town, your customers and your environment?”

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