A standing-room-only crowd participated with rural speaker Becky McCray sharing ways to tap the popularity of small businesses to Pull Your Town Together: Overcoming Divisiveness at the Main Street Now National Conference by Main Street America in Boston in 2023.
Small businesses are trusted – tap that trust
For rural communities with struggling businesses, cash mobs and shop local used to be popular economic development tools. They are useful to bring together people from all across the community and bridge divides.
Small businesses are one of the few institutions with broad support across divisions, in fact they are one of the most trusted institutions in the United States. When we give people small but meaningful ways to support local businesses, we’re tapping that shared trust to bridge divides.
To do that, we want to create experiences that bring people together from across different groups to each play a meaningful role.
Cash mobs can pull the community together
Remember cash mobs? A “cash mob” is a group of regular people who decide to all support the same local business at the same time. Picture you and 10 friends all going to the hardware store each with $25 you’re going to spend there. Think how excited you’ll be and how much of a difference you’ll make in the merchant’s sales total.
This has all three elements: Bring people together across groups, give everyone a small but meaningful role, and create experiences that change people’s thinking.
Cash mobs went viral about 10 years ago, and now the buzz has died down. At the Institute for Quality Communities Placemaking Conference, Melody Warnick, author of This is Where You Belong, said cash mobs are still a good way to build place attachment.
Shop Local that still works now
Another project that is not as popular as it used to be is shop local campaigns. To be effective at bringing people together and changing behavior, it has to be more of an experience than just a slogan.
Franklin County, Iowa, started a ‘buy one product local’ campaign that turned into a real experience because they picked toilet paper as the focus. They identified every single business that sold toilet paper, including the Hispanic grocery, the farm supply and the hardware store. Those businesses got really creative with displays and promotions. The local radio station told toilet paper jokes. Facebook was filled with posts of people shopping for toilet paper, pictures included.
Everyone in town was talking about toilet paper! They were redefining themselves as people who supported their town, all because they bought their toilet paper locally.
This has all three elements: Bring people together across groups, give everyone a small but meaningful role, and create experiences that change people’s thinking.
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Rural Speaker Becky McCray presented this session to the Main Street Now Conference, Main Street America, in Boston.
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Becky started Small Biz Survival in 2006 to share rural business and community building stories and ideas with other small town business people. She and her husband have a small cattle ranch and are lifelong entrepreneurs. Becky is an international speaker on small business and rural topics.
