Though in serious times, forget the empathetic emails, and pushing anxiety further. Refocus on your brand and adjust to the times.
Part of being a creative is dealing with crises through communications, most business or services find a way to provide solutions to problems. If we are able to refocus our energies back to product, price and distribution we just might make a difference to customers and keep the economy moving.
Aside from being bombarded with anxiety driven news, you will notice the shift in company communications to keep their customers engaged to their shared experience in the current outbreak.
Of course, it is crucial for the world to be well informed and updated with outbreak news, especially health and safety guidelines.
A crucial time, in which we all must take responsibility to better protect the whole. What we can all agree on is that during this time we do not need further campaigns outside of the news feeding their self awareness of the situation. Not only does it come across as extremely tacky it just feels weird.
A great example of this would be what the Mcdonalds team over in Brazil put together this week, in attempts to emphasise social distancing...
With attempts to outline "separated for a moment, so that we can always be together". At first sight the idea comes across very quirky and an assured way to increase brand equity. Through the cleverness you can see Mcdonalds attempt to proudly show us their brand management strategy.
We can all see the light-heartedness in this but it is very hard to deny the underlining notion of capitalising on events, using the agenda to increase brand equity.
Understandably many are looking at ways to survive, with market leaders pushing these campaigns, it only leads to panic, reemphasising to those down below to do the same.
Head to you mail box right now and just type "COVID-19" to see the piles of emails utilising the fake concern to spark your interest in their services and what you an buy from them.
With these desperate attempts to focus on communications the superficial alarm bells begin to ring. Email after email with opening paragraphs asking "how are you getting through?"
There is a serious need for refocus, lets beginning (revert) to the original Three P's of marketing.
The pressure is on and everyone is concerned with budgets, and on the fence decisions.
To scrap it all? or perhaps reaching out empathically to all customers, letting them know we will see this through together.
It looks as though most don't have tangible solutions to respond to this outbreak. Apart from rushing for the big red button that says 'communications'
As marketing goes into an all time high, the best Covid comms would be no Covid comms at all. Slight distraction is normal, but we need to revert back to getting on with business, running the services people require to keep things in motion.
Let's look at a superior example of responding to Covid-19 with the other Ps for a change?
Uber Eats
The Covid plays into the hands of Uber Eats perfectly. But what is impressive and should be a leading example of what to do. Uber Eats have made major changes to its delivery protocols, support systems and software to not only make more money but also ensure that money gets back to its restaurant partners as quickly as possible.
The company is pumping millions into independent restaurants with free promotional coupons and has dropped many of the up-front costs usually associated with a restaurant joining its network. It has also introduced a new opt-in program so that small restaurants, challenged by liquidity, get access to their revenues on a daily basis. And it has made significant changes to its app with a new protocol that allows consumers to request a delivery at the doorstep rather than in person.
Good for business with a big Green Tick.
Don't let these efforts go unnoticed, what is needed now more than ever is a surge of companies to adjust their functionality to best accommodate the crisis rather than using the pitfalls of this sudden pandemic to push sales.
Of course it can be difficult, to avoid the buzz words in your communicating, but through saying less and doing more we may see this as a past memory sooner than later.
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