On November 1st, Nashville Mayor John Cooper announced a #NashvilleShopsLocal hashtag campaign to encourage citizens to showcase things they’ve bought at local businesses. During the first month, less than 10 shoppers participated. The rest was mostly Mayor Cooper snacking or drinking coffee at local establishments. Oh, and the advertising spam, there was lots of spam.
The November 1st post by Nashville Mayor John Cooper included a video (below) of him stating “In November, I’ll be visiting our local businesses, and I’m challenging you to shop small too… When you shop in Nashville, take a photo, post it with the hashtag #NashvilleShopsLocal, I’ll do the same.”
We reviewed all public posts with the #NashvilleShopsLocal hashtag across Twitter, Facebook, and Instagram, for the Month of November. Nashville, with a population near 700,000, had less than ten citizens participate by showing off their local purchases. The Mayor, however, took the opportunity to show off his lunch at Swett’s, his lunch at Plaza Mariachi, and his coffee at HQ-Nashville, arguably things he would have been doing anyways – eating and drinking.
The Mayor was the single most frequent user of the #NashvilleShopsLocal hashtag (other than shops advertising in an attempt to monopolize on the minimal press coverage of the hashtag campaign). He also visited ‘Cool Stuff Weird Things’ where he says he was shown around the store, Batch Nashville, and also ‘A Country State of Mind’, where he appeared to make his first actual non-food related purchased of four dog tags.
Of the less than ten citizens that used the hashtag for its intended purpose, a handful of those were Metro Council Members, some who tagged along with the Mayor near the end of the month. If this is any indication of the Mayor’s reach and ability when it comes to social media, the next few years will be an uphill battle for the team behind the Mayor.
