Sorry Ms. Ladd Of The Jackson Free Press, Your’re Just Wrong. ShopLocal IS Local.

Posted on 4 August 2009 by Patrick Flanagan No Comments

(2.42 out of 5)

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The editor-in-chief Donna Ladd over at the free weekly publication Jackson Free Press in Jackson, MS recently published an article about ShopLocal that contained a few inaccuracies.  In it Ms. Ladd makes the argument that ShopLocal is really not “local” at all. This article about ShopLocal was part of an overall piece about “The Local Lie: How Big Stores Are Pretending to be the Little Guy” (pg 14 – 20).

The core issue at hand seems to stem from a definition of what “local” means.  Does “local” mean:

• One’s physical store location?
• The store ownership residing in the same proximity as the store’s location?
• Having a store location in any given town?
• Only having a one to a few store locations?

The answer is YES to all of the above.  Local has become a very nebulous term these days.  To further prove the point, here are some hard to categorize “local” scenarios:

• A regional retailer with 20 stores across 10 different towns.  Is this store still local?
• A corporately owned, but regionally and/or locally managed and operated store. Even though the profits are going back to corporate, does this count as a local store?

So with all this confusion around the meaning of “local”, the ShopLocal team has long broken down the word local into three (3) unique categories:

• National-local: These are stores that have a national footprint, but still on a granular form have local market presences across many communities and cities.  Here is an example aggregated site of these national-local type advertisements for the Jackson, MS area
• Local-local: These are stores that are only found in one region. Examples include a small up & coming chain or a successful multi-location family business.
• Hyper-local: These are stores that are only found in one (1) and only one town. Typically, these are referred to as mom & pop type operations.

Big stores, such as Lowe's & Walgreen's are as much part of local communities than any small mom & pop type store. One could argue that these national-local retailers contribute a lot more to local towns in the way of jobs and tax revenues than owner operated businesses.

ShopLocal does focus mainly on the national-local types of retailers, but ShopLocal however has been deeply involved in Jackson, MS local-local and hyper-local advertising since 2005 with a competing local newspaper called The Clarion Ledger (Gannett owned).  Over the course of five (5) years, ShopLocal has worked to promote and publisher 2,585 ROP (run of press) ads in total for some of the most hyper-local, mop & pop type businesses in and around the Jackson, MS metro area.  It doesn’t get any more local than that Ms. Ladd.  The yearly breakdown of the these Jackson, MS metro area ROP ads that ShopLocal re-published online (within this locally co-branded version of ShopLocal.com) is as follows:

• 2005: 435 ads
• 2006: 762 ads
• 2007: 451 ads
• 2008: 675 ads
• 2009: 262 ads

Over this five year period, the top local-local Jackson, MS advertisers that ShopLocal has worked with have been:

1. McDade’s Market
2. Shoe Station
3. Hobby Lobby
4. Shoe Gallery
5. Southeast Foods
6. Sam’s Stock Room
7. City Wide Cleaners
8. Bath Fitter
9. Fads & Frames
10. Lee Michael’s Fine Jewelry and Distinctive Gifts
11. Batte Furniture
12. Steen & Beaver
13. Lemuria
14. At Home Seniorcare, Inc.
15. Craft Office Plus

So contrary to what the misinformed article suggested, ShopLocal does truly support both the national-local retailers (like CVS, Target, Sears and Office Depot) and the local-local & hyper-local type of retailers (in this case, Shoe Station & Southeast Foods).

Thanks Chicago Sun-Times For The Poor Online Reporting

Posted on 1 June 2009 by Patrick Flanagan Comments Off

(2.75 out of 5)

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Not all press is good press.  Case in point was a very recent article by Chicago’s (other) newspaper, the Sun-Times.  In it the writer suggests, via a very poor and limited description of the partnership that ShopLocal and the Grocery Shopping Network has currently that the “Grocery Shopping Network, which serves local stores such as Ultra, Strack & Van Til and grocers served by the ShopLocal site”  So when my team read this, we all asked “That’s it??!?”  What a terrible description of this joint venture.  In this case, it would have been better for the reader to not have ShopLocal thrown into the mix at all, if it was going to be done so poorly.

Read the article for yourself and come to your own conclusions. In any case, know that:

• GSN focuses on smaller, regional grocers like uKrops & Ultra Foods
• Shopocal focuses on larger, national grocers like Super Value (Albertsons being just one of many brands that ShopLocal serves), Publix, Stop & Shop and Winn-Dixie to name a few
• Not all ShopLocal grocery weekly ad (or SmartCircular) sites have GSN display ad integrations. Each client gets to decide if this type of ad supported model makes sense for their unique business
• The GSN and ShopLocal partnership is all about expanding the reach and distribution of the GSN display ad network into and across these larger ShopLocal grocery clients and other clients that make sense for CPG type advertising such as drugstores
• The main goal is to offer these types of weekly ad clients a way of monetizing parts of the SmartCircular weekly ad web sites via display ad revenues, much like other larger retailers have extensively done such as Walmart.com (leaderboard in the header) and Amazon.com (MPU / cube ad in the right hand rail)
• The value proposition to the advertisers (eg the CPG manufactures) is really strong – placing targeted ads to local, in-market, store-bound shoppers

A more visual counter-point to this limited at best review of the ShopLocal – GSN integration by the Chicago Sun-Times is this live example (for the Super Value brand Albertsons) that really highlights the partnership in action.  Notice the great integration between the Adobe Flex application and the display ad server (in this case Dart For Publishers – DFP)

Annotation "A" above points out the nice integration between the core ShopLocal SmartCircular 4.1 Grocery site with the GSN provided CGP focused display ads. Annotation "B" shows a nice use of Wisdom of the Crowd data to populate a "Top Ten" style list of items at a unique store location level.