Search begins for High Street Champions

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The team behind Local Rewards, the service that aims to help retailers recover from the impact of the pandemic, is searching for 3,600 people to become the champions of their local high streets.

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Local Rewards enables participating retailers to cross-promote and support their high street neighbours to create an online network of connected traders or High Street Guide. It allows shoppers to see businesses near them and view their social media content as they are shopping the city. The aim is to provide every shopper with a prompt after each high street purchase that reveals somewhere else nearby that they may like to discover. The content is sourced from social media, connected via Google maps, and is connected to payments from Visa, Mastercard and Amex.

The search is being launched in the run-up to the Independents’ Day weekend on 3-4 July, an annual campaign to promote small independent shops around the UK.

Polly Barnfield, chief executive of Maybe* Tech, said: “The High Street Champions programme is all about enabling people, whether they’re a business owner, a social media expert or just a person who lives in a town, to be the champion of their local high street.

“All we need them to be is the person who shares their town’s High Street Guide every day on social media, puts up posters locally, and tells local businesses how to make use of it. Everybody will have a different way of doing this, but we will provide everything they need to make their high street famous and to ensure people are invited back there on a daily basis.”

Barnfield added: “Each Champion will get all the tools they need and masses of help and support. We want to celebrate what’s great about our high streets up and down the country, because we know they’re evolving, we know they’re changing but know fundamentally, people want a physical experience, but this is something that we have to all do together.”