Shop Local Shaming Transcription
Wait, What? Really? Okay. With your host, Loren Weisman. This is a fully licensed theme song for the show about stuff that makes you say, wait, what? Really? Okay, Houston, we have a problem and that problem is audio. My name is Loren Weisman. This is the brand messaging podcast. Wait, What? Really? Ok. And I’m coming to you today on my headphones because of errors and problems and issues with my microphone and the other computer. So I apologize for the quality of the audio. I hope the quality of what’s being shared is something you can resonate with. This episode is called the Shop Local Shaming and Small Business Messaging Missteps. If you’ve noticed at all, there is a tone, and this is in a lot of different places all across the country and even online, on television and even in a shop window, there’s an aspect about, and I have no problem with it, Shop Local. I personally, from a messaging standpoint, would rather see it delivered a little bit more of consider shopping local. And here’s what this is, and here’s what that is, and here’s what we have. The problem I see is the shaming that goes on, the insulting, the aggressiveness, the passiveness aggressiveness, and then the insulting and the assumptions that go along with the Shop Local trend. Now, there are some, I’m not saying this is all. There are some very moral, honorable local business owners, local shops that are out there and they are inviting in honor, they’re inviting in love, not using fear tactics or pressure tactics or toxic tactics for that matter. So again, this is not pointed at them, but there are a lot of people out there that are taking an approach that is irresponsible, unprofessional, dishonorable and just all out rude. Where does anyone, and we saw this in a couple places here in Orlando. Where does anyone have the right to say, if you don’t shop here, you don’t care about your community? When I saw that in a particular sign and a particular message that came out online. I do care about my community and I do care about messaging, motioning, connecting in love and honor. And I will never shop there again if it comes to an insult to try to draw an audience, to get conversion. How is that going to work? And especially in these days, we’ve seen this tone before. How could you possibly go to Walmart? Oh, you’re just going to go to one of those big box stores and grab one of those things when you could get one of these and it’s locally made and this feeds into the economy. Now again, I am all about local businesses. I am all about small businesses. But when they are communicating and they’re messaging, and if they want to do it with authenticity and authority, invite me instead of ordering me, and instead of shaming me, explain what you have. Shop local. You know what? Take it up a notch. Take it up a notch of respect and honor in a time that’s challenging, in a time where a lot of people have lost money. Explain the difference beyond just a statement. And really with a lot of these local businesses that are in tight shape, I completely understand that. But where is it fair for the other people that may not have a local business? Maybe they work for a big box store, maybe they work for a corporation, maybe they work for Disney or somewhere where they have lost their income. And right now, the concept is, I’ve got three kids. I want to get this many presents for each of them. If I go here, if I order online on Amazon, I’ll be able to do this. Yes, I want to be a part of my economy, I want to be a part of my community, but also right now, I want to take care of my family. How can those people be faulted? And the fact that people have attacked on Twitter, on Instagram, on Facebook, saying, well, oh, there was one that was great earlier this week and it inspired doing this, this podcast now was something, you know, you could get a couple less items for your kids and you could get them locally and how much would that make this business feel good? I’m sorry, as a father, father of one, my focus in the things that are needed come to my family in the time that I’ve lost, not being on the road, not speaking, certain things being held up. Yes, I still do want to support my community, but my first responsibility is to my wife, my daughter, my family and the well being there. And as this has all happened, it is looking at a budget and going, okay, where do we trim? Where do we slice things down a little bit? What can we do? And you know what? I get that the local gas station, that might do a little bit more for this particular person, but I have a Walmart gas station that’s about five minutes away. And I have a Walmart card which adds an extra discount there. And I’m sorry that right now. No, let me pull back on that. I’m not sorry right now at this time. When it comes to gasoline, when it comes to putting fuel in these two cars that we have, that’s one area where I’m going to save as best I can. It comes to the same thing in Other areas, it comes to the same thing. In presence, it comes to the same thing, okay, you know you’re shamed to go to Starbucks. There are many people support this community. Come here and have this coffee at this coffee shop. You should be supporting local coffee. Coffee, tell me what you have. Tell me about your flavors. What if just as a subjective opinion, what if that local coffee shop just sucks and they’re to you not saying it’s to everyone it’s subjective. But what if it sucks to you and you don’t like their coffee and maybe you prefer Starbucks, maybe you prefer Dunkin Donuts, maybe you have a personal preference where it tastes that much better to you. And in that experience, how are you not being a part of your community by saying, okay, well I’m going to go get coffee here in the mindset of this larger scale of your budget, for us to all truly love our community, according to many individuals out there, we have to probably be spending tenfold of what we’re spending right now and make it all completely localized. And again, on the other side of it, and we’ll flip the switch. We’re at seven minutes. Let’s go positive here. On the other side of it, if the product just isn’t that good or if you don’t know that much about it, people, you’ve got to come in here and see my place. Let’s move away from that. Invite them on social media, not just to put out these shop Local and it’s shop Local days and support your community. Because in a way, a lot of these families need that support right now. And to be shamed and guilted for buying their presence on Amazon, getting their gas or food at Walmart and making certain decisions that they have to make right now and to be shamed for that because they’re not helping a particular business that also may be in trouble or may not be doing as well. That’s not fair. So let’s now we hit that mark. Let’s now mark it over to a softer level of messaging that can be a little bit more engaging. I believe some of the problems where this kind of messaging shows up and this guilting and this shift shame and this aggressiveness or passive aggressiveness can be solved in inviting the flip side of not saying shop local. Because even if you’re that individual that is not using shame tactics right now just to put out shop local and come from the intention of, well, I’m not saying that that’s not going to complete and put together what you want to see or get the perception of. From an audience because they’re experiencing it from other people. Shop local is trending emotionally as a bad word to many because of that guilt that they’ve seen in other places. Oh, well, that’s not me. It doesn’t matter. So to flip that over, to understand, to get out the intention of your heart, to get that through to the perception of Most begin to talk about and begin to invite or at least consider it what you do, how you’re doing it differently. How could there be a variation? Okay, you know, I know some toy stores out on the west coast and they flip their messaging. We talked about this a couple years ago. They flipped it from, you know, don’t go to Amazon and don’t go here and come here. It wasn’t working well for them when they began to flip their messaging to say, you may want to get. If you buy this here and this breaks or you have a problem, you can bring it back to us and we can look at it. We may be able to help you. We may be able to get this thing repaired. They had this teddy bear repair system and it was basically, they were tied to a person in a strip mall that this toy shop was attached to that where that did sewing and seamstress stuff. So part of their upsell, which was much more engaging than a guilt push, was if that dog gets to the bear, okay, if you got to do it on Amazon, that’s fine, but if that dog gets to that bear, if, you know, kid bites it, if whatnot, within this amount of time, we’ll patch them up for free. So now you’ve just brought a different offer to the table. You brought a different light to the table. You brought something that has, I don’t want to call it a warranty, but an extension to it. In addition to it, many of these shops also to begin to tell the vicarious story of this is how I opened, this is what I did. This is how it’s been a little scary. These are the things that we’ve been doing in Covid. These are the things that we do. Not to beat out Amazon or Walmart or Target, but how we work to differentiate. It’s not going negative. It’s not saying you’re not going to get this kind of customer service and they’ll never get back to you, but we will. It’s explaining your customer service. It’s inviting people to your story. In small businesses, the messaging oftentimes it heads. When it’s in a fear place, it heads toward shame. It heads Toward attacking. Let’s not attack Target, let’s not attack Walmart. If you’re a small business right now that regardless of your feelings of their operations or whatnot, you may have a great deal of an audience that will associate your attack with more of that shame, with aspects of the perception that may not tie to your intention. But overall, it’s still sitting in a place of fear and it’s still sitting in a place of anger. So in the ways that you can begin to or further tell the story of how you came about things that you might carry that nobody else does, what is something about you? You know, there’s a new bookstore here and all we’re seeing for certain media is and this was a proven concept over here. So come here. And this was. Tell me about the store. I walked in there for myself with my daughter and I found this cool little, you know, children’s area. Just a different type of vibe, a different thing with what was going on with the books. It was inviting. And I don’t see that anywhere online. I just see this is new and support local business. It’s a beautiful bookstore. It’s the same thing with many of these restaurants. It’s not shaming somebody for going to Chili’s, but. And not necessarily crossing. Do you really love the Chili’s avocado cheeseburger? I do. It’s great. And I had a guy in a place that was in Winter park about a year back and he said, and it was just a beautiful, humble approach. Have you ever had that thing over at Chili’s? It wasn’t a judgment for going to Chili’s. Well, we do a little bit different with the avocado sauce and we use this little pico with the avocado and we add this, this and this. You might like it. It wasn’t. You’ll love it. It’s better. You’ve got to have. You shouldn’t go to Chili’s. It was an engagement. It was a beautiful form of authentic engagement to draw something that I liked from a larger scale chain restaurant to invite me to try a local burger place and try what they were doing and giving me an idea about it. And yeah, I went and yeah, I spent the money and the next time I’m out in Winter Park, I’ll probably go there again. That’s the story. That’s the flip. That’s where we lose. We move from the shaming and the aggressive and the fear to a place of love and engagement. And it will do worlds better for your business if we Invite people by explaining about you, about the store, about the employees. Are you looking into a certain product here? Try to come on Tuesdays or Wednesdays when so and so is here. He or she just really knows their stuff. And even in the knowing, knowing the stuff, you buy plenty of things on Amazon. You buy things that element, not necessarily somebody sewing up a teddy bear, but that local hardware store, that one place where there’s stuff that you can find out or connect with people, not necessarily just YouTube it online. And again, not knocking that, but you could say something. I know you could run into a problem with something like this if you ordered it and you might find five YouTube videos and they might be a little bit vague if you do purchase it from here, here’s how we can help. Now take that up a notch. Add to those YouTube videos. If you are a service provider, if you are a knowledge, an expert, have experience in some of these things, add to that flavor, add to that voice. Embellish with your authority and an aspect of vicarious, vicarious connection, understanding about the products and the services. You have now clear out the whole shaming and you’ve opened up the door for people to feel that much and more engaged, to feel you coming at them in love, for them to take a chance and maybe walk through those doors, because a lot of them are not coming through those doors because they don’t want to be shamed and maybe they even want to have a look, but maybe they feel just that much more overwhelmed. Lastly, consider going the opposite direction of shame. Consider not just saying, well, you got a lot, you got to shop local after you leave here, you got to go here and then you got to go here, you got to spend a whole bunch of money that maybe they don’t have. Maybe it then becomes something of an ask and an invite, an understanding, a humility. So not only, you know, not going in a derogatory or a negative or a fear way about somebody going to Walmart or going to a big box store or choosing to buy something that’s a little bit more affordable because it’s the right time, but really to be sympathetic, empathetic and engaging. I know you may want to go do this, you know, maybe it’s the local Christmas tree seller and it’s that element of, yeah, you want to get your tree here, you know, these are a little bit up. Maybe you’re going to want to do this tree. And if you’re a little worried about our stands, if they don’t come with it in certain places, I heard Walmart is doing this, invite the connection of it. There is a way to support a community. Not a lot of people talk about that. There is a way to support a community while at the same time allowing that community to go and save money in different places, the different ways that you can offer up things. Okay, you might want to get this from us here. And you know what, on Amazon you might do better. So perhaps you buy these things with us and maybe these other items, you’ll save a few bucks and you go over here. Yes, that might sound counterintuitive to the yell tell sell and the always pressuring and always pushing and always upselling. But right now it’s a different time. And if somebody said that to me, I really would be looking a little bit deeper into that business and how I could support that business. Because when I’m hearing words and I’m seeing that a business is not attacking me or that when I look at something and I think, you know, I might be able to get X, Y or Z part of this online. Oh, well, you have to get it here. Well, you know, you got to support local business. Wow. We can do the local business, we can support it. We can still love our community even if we’re shopping, you know, Walmart, Publix, wherever else. It’s a harsh thing to read some of those statements of you’re not. I was on some site earlier and it was amazing. It was this list of you don’t love your community if you don’t do this. You have to do it. This is what it does locally. A lot of it. Some of the statements were true. There was a lot that was subjective, a lot that was assumptive and a lot that was incredibly insulting. You can love your community in a lot of other ways. You can even share about certain businesses because you might not even be able to go there and you could recommend them. But in this tone, in this timbre, in this tempo. Right now let’s move away from the shaming. Let’s allow for a standpoint. I mean, if it was the same thing for you, let’s say, and maybe for some of these shop people it is, and these store people it is. Are you really going? Would you. What if the shoe is on the other foot? Or maybe it is and you have to go certain elements and you have to go a little bit cheaper here and you have to go a little cheaper there. Yes. You can’t possibly, and some people can’t possibly have that be understood for their business. And yet they’re asking it for others. So the close in this thing, the concept is the messaging missteps as a whole is an arrogance and a lack of humility, a lack of empathy and a lack of understanding. It’s also a missed point that the intention of, well, I’m just saying shop local because I want people to support the community and that would be really nice. The perception of that by many is being read as insulting because many people are insulting, many people are shaming. I’m not saying don’t necessarily have the shop local sign out there, but add to it, add under it, explain what you have, what you’re doing, allow for the tagline, the ask the call to action to include a reason why. And not just shop local. Give them a reason why they should shop local with you beyond all the reasons that they’ve heard that go from the aggressive to the passive aggressive to you don’t love your community, explain about the products, explain about the additional services, explain about the care, explain about the staff, engage people to make that decision. And even if they don’t continue in that more positive mode to eventually, as people have a little bit more money, have a little bit more time or continually see you, maybe they’ll circle around again. Because the insulting, the attacking, the shaming, the acting in fear and arrogance and anger is not working. And not only is it not working for you, but as you, if you’re putting that out there, it’s hurting other local businesses too. So consider taking that step back, standing in love, not fear. Sharing authenticity and the story and the invitation and the store and the employees and a little bit more about the products and a little bit more about how they may get a better service from you for getting it through you. And then in that, continue that kind of endurance, engagement with authenticity and authority. No negativity, no bashing the stores, but in a sense, and in the end, moving away from the, you know, shop local and giving them a reason why they should consider shopping local and why they should consider shopping with you. And in that consideration, in that invitation instead of an order, you may find the orders moving up more and more and more. Wait What Really Ok.
Shop Local Shaming Transcription