The team behind Local Rewards is searching for 3,600 people around the UK to become champions of their local high street. The search is being launched in the run-up to Independents’ Day weekend on 3-4 July; an annual campaign to promote independent shops around the UK.

Local Rewards, a new, free-to-access service, is helping retailers in towns across the UK recover from the impact of successive lockdowns; supporting them in reaching more customers and increasing sales. Its High Street Guides service launched by social media specialists Maybe* Tech allows shop owners to reward and communicate with shoppers. The intention is to ‘level the playing field’ between local retailers and giants such as Amazon.

Commenting is Polly Barnfield OBE, CEO of Maybe* Tech. “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. However, we will provide everything they need to make their high street famous.”

With Local Rewards, participating retailers can cross-promote and support their high street neighbours; creating an online network of connected traders or a ‘High Street Guide’.

It also 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. This will reveal somewhere else nearby that they may like to discover. All of the content comes from social media; connected via Google maps and to payments from Visa, Mastercard and Amex.

Barnfield continues; “The technology is in place. We now just need a network of people to share it across the UK. 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. We know they’re evolving, we know they’re changing, but we know fundamentally people want a physical experience and this is something that we have to all do together.”

For further information and to express an interest in becoming a High Street Champion, please click here.