By Danny Schrafel
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Huntington’s Buy Local campaign had an hour-long platform on one of talk radio’s biggest stages on Sunday.

Huntington Chamber of Commerce president Bob Bontempi called into the Bob Salter Show on sports talk giant 660-WFAN June 14 to talk about the Chamber’s campaign to support local business, calling the
WFAN appearance a “good opportunity” to spread the word.

“It’s a business unto itself which has been extremely successful in working to retool and redirect the spending of folks so the aggregate dollars they have, which are less – discretionary spending is way down – maybe make that decision [to] spend those dollars in the local economy instead of having that second glass of wine and making that e-commerce click at 11 p.m.”

Following a crash course on chambers of commerce and what they do, the hour with Salter focused on the efforts of the Chamber of Commerce and its efforts to sustain a local economy during a recession. Their goal is to get consumers to rely less on Internet shopping and more eager to find comparable products and services in Huntington.

“Everything is not always equal,” he said. “It may be convenient for my wife and myself, but [e-commerce] is not doing much to support local business. When downtown areas are not being as productive as they used to be, it’s a slippery slope that you don’t want to go down.”

Malls, which often receive scorn as draining resources and businesses from downtown areas, are also part of the “buy local” equation. “They’re employing folks in the community and shoppers are paying sales tax,” Bontempi said. “They’re an important anchor.”

Bontempi told Salter that the program is taking root in Huntington, as measured by phone calls he receives about people who decided to spend their money in Huntington.

“I get calls from people telling me that ‘I was going to buy this online, but I saw the ads in the papers and I changed my behavior,’” he said, noting one woman who decided to keep her party in Huntington – Meehan’s, to be precise – after being influenced by the campaign.

The keys to success, Bontempi said, are maintaining a wide-reaching coalition of stakeholders and supporters, like library districts, arts councils and Kiwanis clubs, for example. In addition, the campaign must remain relevant.

“It’s like any sales campaign – you want reach and frequency,” Bontempi said. “When you hit people eight, 12, 15 times with a message, it resonates to the point where behavior changes.”

The Bob Salter Show airs for two hours on 660 AM on Sundays, starting at 6 a.m.