by Joe Grafton
Well…that was interesting.
As the afternoon winds down on the day after Thanksgiving, I’m left to reflect on the whole Plaid Friday experience. I guess, if anything, it reaffirmed my belief in what we’re doing and injected new energy into our work.
It was surreal, hearing this Radio Boston piece comparing Plaid Friday to Small Business Saturday. I’m no journalist, and a Google search turned up nothing, but I would guess AMEX has to have millions invested in that campaign. And yet, here is the host asking which one will ‘stick’. As you’ll see below, Plaid Friday came to New England with a much less resourced, but maybe as effective, approach.
Plaid Friday, if you have yet to hear, was created last year by local business owners and organizers in Oakland. You can listen to one of the creators on WBUR’s Here and Now . What I think is so amazing is that without any truly organized or staffed group trying to promote it or pitch it, communities all over the nation adopted the concept and set it free into their communities.
And the buzz, to me at least, looked serious.
The idea came to New England through sister organization Seacoast Local’s Karen Marzloff and SLF blogger and good friend of mine, Jody Colley of the East Bay Express. Both amazing entrepreneurs from the independent alt weekly media, they also both work closely with their local business networks. From there, Karen shared the story at our regional gathering of networks, which spawned the 10% Shift 2 years ago among other things.
And that was it. Networks representing thousands of businesses agreed (NELBF), on the spot, to organize our own communities and work together to spread the Shift Your Shopping / Buy Local campaign throughout the holiday season. The four members of the Steering Committee (we’re really excited to see that number grow to 7 in 2011!) Laury Hammel & Stacy Mitchell (authors of the Op-Ed piece this week), Karen & I had a conference call on November 6th where we hashed out a plan for Plaid Friday promo in New England.
The Op-Ed, the social media campaign, the PR…all of it came together as just one of the many things all of us are responsible for in our burgeoning, yet vastly under-resourced, networks.
And what does this really mean? Well, as wonderfully amazing as the people in the local movement are, I’m not sure that a fraction of our collective time is the equivalent of hundreds (thousands?) of hours of professional manpower and potentially millions of dollars that AMEX put towards their campaign.
What I do think it says, however, is that the tipping point for ‘local’ is getting ever closer. That the work we’ve been putting in locally in our communities is paying off. That you: our readers, followers, advocates and evangelists, are talking to your friends and redefining social and cultural norms. That the Shift is starting to ‘sink in’ in our communities. And that we, the people, do have some power left in this society and exercising it can actually be fun and feel good. Two great matches for the holiday season.
As I was writing this blog post, I saw this come across my screen:
Plaid Friday trending on Twitter...nice allegory
Trending on Twitter in Boston ~ #PlaidFriday is on that list and, while Black Friday is #1, its promoted.
One day, I hope, the work done by local networks will get the support from all sectors that it should. We’ll be able to dedicate full time resources to campaigns like Plaid Friday, offer even more support and promotion for our members and continue to build on the idea that if we all come together, as a community, that we can make the world a better, more sustainable place.
But until then, we’ll keep trying things. Some will be a hit, others will not. And when we find something that works, like Plaid Friday, you better believe we’ll do it better the second time around. Plaid Friday Nationwide, from the grassroots…coming November, 2011.
PS-
Plaid Friday is simply the START of the Holiday Shopping Season, please Shift Your Shopping this year. Shop-A-Palooza and Midnight Madness comin atcha next week!
