Think Global, Act Local

From Larissa:

This phrase was first used to encourage recycling, waste reduction campaigns, and other environmental issues. If you keep a keen eye, you will still see bumper stickers with this message (both on cars and for sale).

Here is a blurb from Wikipedia that doesn't say much by way of details, but tells us a) not first used in a corporate advert and b) hsbc was not the first company to take this approach in their marketing campaigns.


from wikipedia
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Frank_Feather

Think Globally, Act Locally was reportedly coined by David Brower, founder of Friends of the Earth, as the slogan for FOE when it was founded in 1969, although others have stated it was originated by Rene Dubos as an advisor to the United Nations Conference on the Human Environment in 1972. Canadian futurist Frank Feather also chaired a conference called "Thinking Globally, Acting Locally" in 1979.[1] Others suggested that this phrase is coined by French theologian Jacques Ellul.

Others later converged "global" and "local" into the single word "glocal," a term used by several companies (notably Sony Corporation and other major Japanese multinationals) in their advertising and branding strategies in the 1980s and 1990s.

Larissa added:

I also stumbled across a flip of the phrase, making it "think local, act global", coined in 1985 by Izumi Aizu (Japanese), which I thought was interesting. All this talk about "global is what local does" seems to make reference the the oft mentioned 'butterfly effect' (I think there was even a movie about that!)

from mathworld.com: In physics, it refers to how tiny changes in initial conditions (such as the flap of a butterfly's wings) manage to have far-reaching, large-scale effects on the development of the system (such as the course of weather a continent away).