Oryana Community Co-op’s 2019 “Give Local” holiday advertising campaign was informed by several internal discussions amongst the co-op’s outreach and marketing staff. “Local” has been a long-term differentiator for food co-ops, though it is increasingly being taken up by other, larger retailers. The strategic goal in crafting these advertisements was to boost seasonal sales of “giftable” local products by correlating them with the localism ethos, valued by many of our core shoppers. Localism, in this case, served as a counterbalance to the increasingly derided commercial nature of gift-giving holidays. Another, more qualitative goal was to visually connect these items (and others) with their local origins by coordinating in-store tastings of featured products, all staffed by local vendors.
As “local” has been a focal point of Oryana’s storytelling for several years, the campaign allowed them to channel previous messaging efforts into the promotion of a specific range of products, for a specific occasion. The featured items were chosen for promotion based on their ease of correlation with gift-giving, taking into consideration the high margin contribution of their home department. Quippy, boldfaced headlines delineate the ads by product type, followed by the tagline “this season, give local.” The campaign’s billboard, print and digital ads worked in tandem with special shelf violator signage and gift tags which were designed to match the look and feel of the campaign.
