More examples of global companies going "local"

Found this great blog post on more examples of large companies attempting to go local with their marketing and their messaging. I cannot imagine any campaign can escape this kind of criticism and critique, but clearly there are better ways to support local business owners and communities. Billboards and signage stoke anger and are disingenuous at best. "See we put a sign here. We know and love you."

I like the approach from Barnes & Noble, but without real geographic reach, they too fail to convince me that they're trying hard to promote local "booksellers". The menu in the image above is the entire scope of the cities where they provide local book news.