Our challenge was to develop a campaign to showcase our local business owners and operators across Mainstreet Tauranga, Greerton Village and Mount Mainstreet. We needed to drive the public to proactively support our hard working and passionate businesses by encouraging them to buy local.
Tuskany strategically created the 'Buy Local Buy Tauranga' campaign. The strategy involved putting a human face on our business community - the hard working mums, dads, grandparents, sons, daughters, entrepreneurs and risk takers who work tirelessly to bring their products and services to us everyday. With families and whanau to care for, staff to retain and suppliers to pay we needed a campaign that resonated in their tills and in the public’s conscience. We conducted a mammoth photoshoot of business owners and rolled out the campaign on billboards, press, website, social media and video. In addition to the public campaign we worked with businesses to build their online capabilities and amplify their market presence. The campaign took a genuine and honest approach reminding the public to ‘spend what you can with our local businesses because spending locally, saves local businesses.’
The campaign instilled pride and respect in our business community. Businesses reported customers coming in and saying they had seen their faces in the campaign and wanted to shop local to support them. It has been described as one of the most successful campaigns staged and it is one of our most important campaigns. The challenges and stresses of 2020 and the global pandemic cannot be underestimated. It was a privilege to work on such an authentic campaign to support our business community and our city.
