Rant: promoting Crewe businesses, or not!

I had planned a longer post after reading this week’s Chron, but I’ll throw it over to you guys. Linking in with what I’m about to moan about, on Saturday I noticed that a marketing/promotion team was in Crewe town centre handing out flyers for the Freeport shopping centre over at Talke. Fair enough, that’s just market forces, opportunism and proactive marketing in action. We have seen the same with the Potteries Centre dominating the Pedley Street billboard near to the train station. 

Anyway, this week’s edition of the Chron takes things too far, IMO. Now running with “Love Cheshire, love your Chronicles…” on the cover and on page 22 as part of a competition, it goes on to actively plug the shopping centre in, wait for it, Staffordshire! So as well as encouraging people to give Crewe businesses a miss it’s touting itself as being all about Cheshire when it has commercial links with organisations in staffs!

Now I am all for competition and choice, but shouldn’t a local paper trumpet local businesses, local entertainment etc? In an ideal world it would. Unfortunately, the Trinity Mirror Group based in Liverpool owns the rag. So the £ will always win the day! Is this right, or should the Chron make greater efforts to secure more Crewe/Cheshire advertising, thus keeping the cash in this area?