What a fun and BUSY week we've had at the Chester County Chamber. Thank you to the many hard-working volunteers and businesses that made Administrative Professionals Day and our Chamber Clay shoot both successful events. Congratulations to Team Landscaping & Mower for a first place finish and Team Classic Metals for a second place finish. The Founders Federal Credit Union team won prizes for their high score in the flurry shoot-out.

Check out this week's photos....and mark your calendars for next week's "Stay Local My Friends" campaign kick off on Thursday, May 2 at the York Technical College Chester Center at 5:00 p.m.
Administrative Professionals Day
CLAY SHOOT
Thank you to the News & Reporter for covering next week's big kick-off event! Check out the article from reporter Brian Garner that ran in Wednesday' edition.

Doing some shopping? Chamber says ‘Chester County Loyal’ and ‘Stay Local My Friends’

By Brian Garner
Tuesday, April 23, 2019 at 5:31 pm (Updated: April 24, 7:26 am)


Editor’s note: The Chester County Chamber of Commerce will present the “Stay Local My Friends” campaign at an event on May 2nd beginning at 5:00 p.m. at the York Tech Chester Center.
Call it a Chamber of Commerce Business After Hours that involves the entire county.
The Chester County Chamber of Commerce has begun a marketing/promotion campaign that has some familiar slogans and aims to connect businesses with other businesses across the county, if not the region.
The chamber isn’t selling beer and they may not represent the Most Interesting Man in the World, but they are still riffing off of a popular ad slogan when they say they want you to “Stay Local My Friends.”
Chamber President Brooke Clinton first introduced the concept of the campaign earlier this year at the chamber’s annual banquet. She sat down with The N&R to explain what the chamber means when they ask their friends to “Stay Local.”
A few years back, Clinton recalls then-President Jim Fuller and chamber board members created the “Buy Local, Buy Chester” campaign.
“That campaign was very well received and we decided that we wanted to build on that campaign. We wanted to take what was successful with that campaign and run with it,” said Clinton.
“We wanted to expand the idea of that theme, and where that campaign focused on Chester, we wanted to make sure that we were promoting the entire county. We came up with the phrase “Chester County Loyal” for the campaign logo. Some board members pointed out that anytime you do anything within Chester County – make a purchase, use a service, put your kids in school here or use our hospital, you’re being loyal to our county. Being loyal goes beyond simply making a purchase in a Chester County establishment,” said Clinton.
“We decided we wanted people to stay loyal to Chester County in all aspects of their life and work. We came up with the “Stay Local My Friends” tagline.”
Using that tagline, the chamber’s marketing strategy will focus on the ideas of “local” and “friends” Clinton said.
“When you focus on “loyal,” “local” and “friends” that really sums us up. We’re all friends, we all shop at each other’s stores, patronize their business or services,” Clinton said.
They way to promote that idea of local and loyal, the Chamber is producing a series of videos where one business owner will talk about the good or services that they get from another friend (who happens to be a business they deal with) and this highlights the interconnectedness of the businesses in Chester County.
So far the Chamber has produced one video and hopes to produce about four or five more, said Clinton.
The ideas of staying local for your business needs demonstrated in the first video are already taking hold, said Clinton. She recently presented her marketing plan to the Chester Development Association and a healthcare professional that attended the meeting said he discovered there’s a Chester business that supplies something his business uses, and he had no idea they could supply it.
“To have someone say ‘I didn’t know they did _____,’ that’s one of our goals with this campaign is for businesses to make connections with each other and with their consumers,” Clinton said.
According to Clinton’s marketing plan the main goals of the Stay Local campaign are to ‘encourage partnerships across all business platforms, increase local spending (a study in Austin, Tex. Found that for every $100 spent at a local store, $45 went back into the community’s economy) and promote a more diverse small business community.’
The methods where this campaign will be marketed are ambitious to say the least: videos, radio and newspaper ads, billboards, speaking engagements, banners, posters, clings and stickers, yard signs and t-shirts, to name a few. Clinton also intends to utilize social media where business owners post the answer to the question: ‘I want my community to know_______’.
“The answer can be about their business or a service they have. Each post will have a picture of the business owner, an answer to the question, the Stay Local logo, the hashtags (#ChesterCountyLoyal and #StayLocalMyFriends) and how long they have been a member of the Chamber,” said Clinton.
“The social media campaign is a focus on an individual business where the video series is a focus on friends,” she added.
The logo that accompanies these posts was designed locally and shows an outline of the state, an image of a farm, a business building a house under construction and a waterfall and white-water rafting crew, depicting many of the aspects of Chester County and what we have to offer. Underneath is “Chester County Loyal” and “Stay local my friends”.
Not only small business owners recognize the importance of such a campaign promoting what we have locally, but the larger industries in the county have also bought into the idea, Clinton says.
“Our industry realizes this is an important campaign, because when people feel connected to their community, they’re much more likely to stay put in their jobs,” she said.
Clinton is expanding the campaign ideas to those chamber members who aren’t in the county as well, asking them how are they “Chester County Loyal”?
One hotel owner in Rock Hill told Clinton if a wedding party is renting the Gateway Center and staying at her hotel in Rock Hill, she makes sure to let them know about the other things to do in Chester County.
Clinton says the chamber wants the consumers to know that when they buy locally, their dollar is going even further in the community.
“There’s a domino effect. Not only does it increase sales, but also that business owner supports other businesses in the community and more than likely has some community things that they support. For example when you buy your auto parts at Carquest, you’ve just supported Little League Baseball in the community, because that business does,” Clinton said.