Since 2015, I’ve been photographing and sharing Clayton’s small businesses — not just to show off my photos, but to help people discover them and make sure the places that open here can actually stay open.
Every month since I moved downtown, I’ve added new photos to Google Maps and social media, helping put Clayton on the map in more ways than one. My images have now been viewed millions of times, all in support of local shops, restaurants, and neighbors I believe in.
I do this because I love this town — or maybe because I’m trying really hard to, since it’s such a big part of who I am.
What I don’t love is seeing the same handful of people treat “support local” like a marketing slogan instead of a mission. The folks who sit on committees, tag themselves in every ribbon cutting, and hire out-of-town photographers, all while ignoring the people who actually live here and do the work every day.
That’s not community building. That’s brand building.
Real community comes from the people who’ve invested their time, creativity, and care into this town for years — not from those who discovered Clayton when it became convenient to market it and sell it off.
That’s what real support for local looks like: sharing what’s good about Clayton and lifting up the people who make it worth living here.
When Marketing Turns Into Monopoly
Somewhere along the way, “promoting Clayton” stopped being about community and started being about control.
The same people who claim to champion local businesses are also the ones forming overlapping boards, managing downtown marketing programs, and quietly steering contracts and partnerships to benefit themselves and their friends.
They’ve turned “community branding” into a closed-loop business model — one where public money and private profit blur together. Where Town-sponsored campaigns, Chamber initiatives, and DDA projects all recycle the same small circle of names. And where “supporting local” really means supporting each other.
These groups aren’t just marketing Clayton — they’re selling it off piece by piece, trading real community investment for glossy campaigns that make the town look good while pushing out the people who made it good to begin with.
The Cost of Selling Out
When outsiders are paid to rebrand a town they don’t live in, while locals who’ve been documenting and promoting it for years are ignored or erased, something’s broken.
We’ve watched consultants come and go, marketing committees form and dissolve, and “strategic plans” pile up while the same handful of insiders profit — and the actual small businesses, residents, and artists are left to fend for themselves.
If you look closely, it’s always the same formula: public relations disguised as civic pride, partnerships that benefit the same few people, and decisions made in the name of “economic development” that somehow never seem to include the people doing the real work.
Several local businesses have gone viral lately, including Triangle Coffee Shop, which WTVD recently featured for helping put downtown Clayton on the map.
But if you follow who gets recognized and when, you’ll notice a pattern. Some voices get amplified faster than others, and visibility often seems to depend on timing and connection more than contribution. Triangle’s success only made it onto official pages after others drew attention to it — not because anyone at the top was paying attention in real time.
Real support for local means championing the businesses doing great work before the cameras show up.
And while they’re quick to reshare a feel-good story, they’re not nearly as quick to fix the real issues those same businesses face, like when the Town abruptly shut down parts of Second Street over broken sewer lines with little notice, leaving shops to struggle through the disruption.
That’s not how you build a downtown.
That’s how you undermine one.
What Real Support Looks Like
Supporting local isn’t complicated.
It means crediting people for their work.
It means hiring local talent when you have it.
It means spending your money in your own town, not exporting it to the next county for showy partnerships and staged events.
It’s what I’ve been doing for years — posting my photos, promoting small businesses, and sharing the stories of the people who make Clayton feel like home.
Clayton Deserves Better
Clayton doesn’t need another marketing plan. It needs integrity.
It needs leadership that values the people who’ve been here — and the ones just arriving — the people opening shops, building businesses, volunteering, and investing in this town because it’s home.
We can’t keep letting the same self-promoting committees decide who gets seen and who gets erased. We deserve a town that uplifts its residents, not one that uses them for PR.
If you believe in a Clayton that supports all of us, and not just the ones in charge of the narrative, early voting opens on Thursday, October 16th.
Let’s put this town back in the hands of the people who live here — not the ones selling us out.