Miconex launch ‘Choose local. Make the switch’ campaign

Miconex has launched a national campaign to encourage organisations to support local with their Christmas rewards and incentives.

The ‘Choose local. Make the switch’ campaign highlights the positive impact that moving to local Gift Cards can have for communities across the country and features employers including Gloucester’s Fasthosts, Sunderland’s Siblings Nurseries and Ilkley’s Ideal Extraction.

Fasthosts moved from using Amazon vouchers to its local Town & City Gift Card, the Gloucester Gift Card, in its monthly staff rewards in summer 2026, citing the move as the biggest action they’ve taken for their city this year.

Siblings Nurseries moved from using a national single brand Gift Card to the Sunderland Gift Card to keep money in the city, while Ideal Extraction made the switch to the Ilkley Gift Card to offer staff more choice while showing their support for the town.

The ‘Choose local. Make the switch’ campaign aligns to new 2026 research from Miconex showing a changing employee rewards landscape, with choice, ease and support for local key for employees and organisations.

In the research, 39% of organisations said evolving employee needs had caused them to change some aspect of their R&I offering in 2026. 98% of organisations said supporting local is important and 89% said CSR has become more important to their organisation over the past 12 months, up from 84% in 2025.

From an employee perspective, 94% of employees said having choice in their rewards and incentives was important, up from the 89% in 2025. In addition, 65% of respondents think their employer could improve their R&I offering, with suggestions for how they could do this including employee of the week/month, Gift Cards to visit local businesses, staff days out, and birthdays off.

The majority of employees (88%) said they would like a Gift Card from their employer at Christmas and 98% of employees said they would like to receive a Gift Card from work for Christmas which can be spent with local and national independent businesses.

Town & City Gift Cards are local Gift Cards for towns and cities across the UK and Ireland. The cards can be spent with shops, restaurants, salons, attractions and services in the town or city they’re branded to, ring-fencing spend to local economies.

In 2026, Town & City Gift Cards went live with leading corporate reward and recognition platforms, including Perkbox, Voucherline and Voucher Express, giving organisations the ability to access 75 digital Town & City Gift Cards for major cities, tourist hotspots and vibrant towns across the UK and Ireland.

Founded in 1998, Fasthosts is one of the largest employers in Gloucester with 250 staff across Fasthosts and its parent company IONOS, and moved to using its local Town & City Gift Card in their Star of the Month awards.

Rupert Bedell, managing director of Fasthosts, said: “By choosing the Gloucester Gift Card for our Star awards, we’re ensuring that money goes back into the city. It is the biggest action we’ve taken for our city this year to help our city to thrive. I was very impressed with the range of businesses that accept the Gloucester Gift Card, including a mix of big brands and independent businesses.”

Siblings Nurseries is an independently run nursery business in Sunderland, with two nurseries. One is a 45 place nursery based at the Business and Innovation Centre and one is a 37 place nursery based inside the Beacon of Light, next to SAFC.

Jo Anderson, owner of Siblings Nurseries, said: “I decided to switch to the Sunderland Gift Card because I wanted to keep the money in the city and potentially allow smaller businesses and people who run businesses in the city to benefit from me buying the card for my staff team. When I gave my team the single brand Gift Card, I thought it offered choice, but the Sunderland Gift Card offers a wider choice with over 200 businesses accepting the card, including M&S, Primark, Next and H&M and other big brands. The longer I’ve been in business, the more I recognise that we should all be supporting each other as far as we possibly can.”

Ideal Extraction is an award-winning dust and fume extraction engineering company based in Ilkley, and use their local Gift Card, the Ilkley Gift Card, for staff rewards throughout the year.

Helen Rhodes, director at Ideal Extraction, said: “We moved to using the Ilkley Gift Card to give our staff more choice and show our support for local. The Ilkley Gift Card is a treat for our employees as it feels like a special gift being branded to Ilkley but it’s also helping our town. It’s a win-win. Our staff love the ability to spend with national businesses as well as independent businesses, to put money back into the town they live and work in, and to discover new businesses they haven’t tried or different shopping areas in Ilkley. And it makes them feel valued as an employee.”

Colin Munro, CEO of Miconex, said: “We’ve launched our ‘Choose local. Make the switch’ campaign to highlight the huge impact that moving to local Gift Cards can have on our communities, bringing people through the door of local businesses with money to spend. In our 2026 research, 65% of respondents said they’d made a specific visit into the town or city to spend their Town & City Gift Card, and 69% used it to try a business they’d never visited before. In addition, 80% say they spend over and above the Gift Card value on redemption. Our cards drive footfall, spend and business discovery, which is invaluable to our business communities. I encourage all organisations to look at making a simple switch this Christmas that would be transformative for our communities.”