ANSWERS TO QUESTIONS OFTEN ASKED

Read all these FAQs, then click on the Get Totally Locally link and basically fill in the form. It’s all there my friend!

Well that’s an easy one, nothing! To volunteer/community groups anyways 🙂

The kit has historically been free to groups but we are currently working on ways to fund Totally Locally so we can build on the success of boosting local economies and take the campaign to the next level. More news on this soon!

In additional to people-power, once deployed, the costs of launching Totally Locally depends on how big an impact you wish to make. You would need to set a budget for yourselves to do a launch event though to cover your printing for posters, letters and events. Many towns group together to crowdfund this or ask their local Council or Councillors for a community grant.

You will need to work with a local printer or designer to get your kit set up and ready for your town, it isn’t set up for you. OR you can just beg and borrow…ask around for local sponsors for printed material (sometimes estate agents, solicitors etc want to help by sponsoring printing, you can thank them by adding a ‘kindly printed by…’ on posters. You could pass a hat around for donations for a printing kitty at each meeting, or just recommend that each business download and print the posters for their own and neighbouring shop windows, that works too and some towns have literally not spent one penny running their campaign. It’s all about the passion you put into it. People will see that.

It depends on you and the people helping in your town. It can be as short as 8 weeks from your initial conversations to your launch event, sometimes it takes a little longer.

You could use the free downloads and try to run the whole campaign from this, but to be honest you will be wasting your time. It’s not about pretty posters, it’s about key, strong messages repeated over and over, so that it gets ingrained into people’s minds. Totally Locally is designed to be a long-term campaign and the Town Kit comes supplied with a campaign timeline for this – just like the big boys use, only made for small independent businesses to use together.

No. Sorry, but this is a big idea that has a well thought out strategy behind it. We don’t want to water it down for towns that have gone the whole hog and have committed to the Totally Locally campaign. Also used randomly, the messages don’t make sense. The ideas, layouts and concepts are all protected under copyright, and the logo & name is trademarked under European law. So please don’t use the stuff, unless you are committed to doing the whole thing. Thank you – It’s nice to be nice.

We ask one thing: If you make a living from regeneration, from working for a private initiative that makes money from regeneration, or you are paid by a council or other organisation, you don’t use our kit yourselves. This is because of the spirit of the Kit centres around volunteers. 

Also you will definitely struggle to run the campaign yourself – this is from experience watching councils try. It doesn’t fit with ‘council way of working’ and is deliberately free of formal structures.

Local Authorities & Councils have tried Shop Local campaigns over & over – most didn’t work. In our experience, this is for one reason. If a council tells a business what to do, and how to do it, it’s a bit rubbish, isn’t it? Someone who doesn’t run a business telling someone who DOES run a business HOW to run their business. Most people have a negative view of council-led initiatives (quite often unfairly) and so they will not engage. Also, there will then be an expectation of “What are ‘they’ going to do for me then? OK, but what are they doing for me next?”.  Which is exactly what kills it all.

BUT….

If you’re a Council, BID or ‘political animal’ and you think Totally Locally is right for your town, we run a Mentoring Scheme to show the businesses of your town how to run the campaign with your organisation in a supporting role. We will you help identify the right local group to take on the campaign, then show them how to do this via workshops and talks. Your organisation can then receive Official Totally Locally Certification – this also includes a license for having your organisation’s logos on the Town Kit posters. This is chargeable and where applicable is compatible with Government funding for helping high streets, independent businesses and strengthening local economies and communities.

For talks, workshops or using our Town Kit as an organisation, get in touch.

BUSINESS ASSOCIATIONS

You could try to, but a ‘paid for’ business association that relies on membership and excludes people who don’t ‘pay in’ will not work! If you want to run it on these grounds, we ask that you include every single business in the town in the campaign, even if they refuse to be involved with your organisation. 

Totally Locally is given away in good faith. We ask that you repay this good faith by making the campaign completely inclusive. This is a condition of you using the kit. 

There are a lot of good people doing good things in many organisations. But they are there to do what they set out to do. Most associations like this have a membership scheme. We’ve heard “I paid 20 quid to join the business association 10 years ago and they did nothing for me!”.

People have pre-conceived ideas about some associations. They may have had a bad experience in the past and that will make them not to want to get involved in Totally Locally if it is run by them.

Totally Locally has to be seen as a “No membership, no paying to join (with perhaps voluntary donations for printing etc), non-exclusive” thing.

Our experience has shown it will make it a lot harder to create an all-inclusive campaign. It also causes friction within the town – so you shoot yourself in the foot at the first hurdle, and damage the brand of Totally Locally.  That’s why we say this can’t happen.

POLITICAL PARTIES AND CANDIDATES

For the same reasons as mentioned above, organising and joining in with Totally Locally has to be non-exclusive. If you attached a political candidate or party to it then you will exclude or alienate some then it won’t be as effective as it could be.

So we kindly ask that politics is kept out of Totally Locally. Collaboration gets things done, as does people of different political persuasions working together.

The printed files are currently created in Adobe Indesign (which most designers and printers use) but we are currently transitioning to the much more reasonably-priced Affinity Publisher which can be purchased as a one-off rather than having an Adobe subscription. All files will be saved as IMDLs and PDFs which Affinity Publisher can edit. Please make sure though, that the people who are using the software have a lot of experience – mainly in the field of design / web design / marketing and knows about different formats for web vs printing, bleeds and margins etc. If you don’t have the people you need have a try your local printers, the can usually get the kit setup for you.

Sorry no. (We’re a bit stroppy aren’t we!). We use the colours we do after much research and insight – they are colours that people associate with food, freshness, localness (is that a word?). The logos are set in stone, and trademarked. Totally Locally works because it is becoming a recognised movement – and as such takes its key from big brands around the world. As an example – Nike doesn’t change its message for every town as people have got to know what it stands for. Same here – in our own little off-the-wall way.

Yes. Our talks and workshops are fun, unbelievable practical, free of bullsh*t and accessible to anyone. We’ve spoken at events and worked with groups across the UK, Australia, New Zealand, France & Ireland. We help people to look at things differently, give practical tools to make things happen. Contact us to discuss costs for talks and workshops.

Email us at info@totallylocally.org to find out more.

The method for setting up Totally Locally Towns is to give you the resources and instructions to do everything yourself, but we can also come and talk, run workshops and generally show you how to do things. This part isn’t free, as it is our time you are paying for. To find out costs please email info@totallylocally.org

Once setup, you need to run the campaign yourselves, which will mean you will need a dedicated volunteer group and have a campaign that will be sustainable. We can show you how to do this.

Would you believe, yes there is! On Facebook we have a closed ‘Do-ers’ Group set up for Totally Locally towns to ask questions, share what awesome things we have all been up to and help each other. You have to request access to this and when do, don’t forget to answer the required questions and tell us all about you, your town and what your involvement with the campaign will be.