Content Amid Contamination

You’re likely wondering what to do next. Is it time to hit the pause button on your marketing? Or should you double down? Clients have been asking me the same question for two weeks: How do we move forward while COVID-19 is running rampant? Marketers want to know which measures are prudent, strategic, and thoughtful. 

Collectively, we’ve been through tragedy before. Although it feels like nothing quite compares to this pandemic, we can lean on learnings from recent history for direction as to how to conduct business in times of distress. The companies that prioritized the following three things during and after 9/11 and the great recession fared better than those that did not. 

History tells us to: 

1. Stay visible
2. Be helpful
3. Be prepared

An efficient way to do all three is with content. It’s time to write, film, compose, engineer, code, blog, and analyze for good. Don’t produce content because you’re trying to overtly sell something or fundraise. Do it because most of us are coping at home with limited opportunities for human interaction. Do it because there is value in your ideas, expertise, and leadership. Do it because you have a giant audience of readers and viewers hungry for shared human experiences, a distraction from reality, and useful information. By providing value, solving problems, and delivering customer-focused information, you will succeed at staying visible, being helpful, and being prepared. 

Create with Empathy.

Before you craft your strategy, you must consider the nuances of this particular situation. No matter if you are a non-profit, B2B or B2C marketer, people are on the receiving end of your messaging. I said you need to stay visible, but that doesn’t mean you should pretend like nothing is happening. Overly aggressive, in-your-face salesmanship will do nothing but damage your brand. Understand that the person you’re pitching to may be facing job loss or coping with a sick family member. Tread lightly. Review all new content through the lens of someone whose parent was diagnosed with COVID-19 this morning or a restaurateur recently forced to close her business this week. Use the worst-case scenario as your litmus test to make sure your messaging isn’t insensitive or tone-deaf.  

On the flip side, use this same thinking to uncover opportunity. Dive deep into your customer personas and get creative. What do your customers need or want right now? My firm works for Milwaukee PBS. Before the official Safer at Home order was instituted, we were working on a brand campaign. As the school closure announcements mounted, so were cries for help from anxious parents unsure how to entertain and homeschool their children, especially for several consecutive weeks. We put the brand campaign on hold and shifted focus to content. How could we be useful to our members? Milwaukee PBS packaged and reformatted its educational content both on the local and national level. We had to move fast. The brand campaign has been replaced with an initiative to communicate the accessibility of content to support homebound families. 

Famed children’s storyteller and illustrator Mo Willems acted fast and put content—specifically a pigeon—to work. Willems hosts daily lunchtime doodles where he teaches kids about storytelling, art, and publishing from the confines of his home studio. The sessions are sponsored and hosted by the Kennedy Center. He said it perfectly during his first doodle sesh, “We need to find a way to be isolated and together at the same time.” 

Both examples come from brands that rely on revenue. And both examples demonstrate opportunities to solve big problems for huge audiences with purpose and value. 

Fill a Need.

Pandemic or not, I always advise clients that quality should come before quantity. Don’t blog or create videos daily for the sake of meeting an arbitrary quota. If you don’t have anything valuable to say, don’t say anything. Be strategic and give a damn about your production quality. 

I’m softening my stance on the latter temporarily. Maybe your content doesn’t need to be perfectly polished right now. The “What you say” is everything right now. But it does need to be on-brand. Have you seen recent episodes of John Oliver or Stephen Colbert? They aren’t letting the virus or social distancing stop them from sharing their message and connecting with audiences. Even if that means Colbert is in his bathtub using an iPad in lieu of a camera crew and Oliver is broadcasting from a set that looks like “where movie characters go when they’ve just died.”

Focus on the message. Have you seen your email inbox lately? We are bombarded by emails that typically start, “In these unprecedented times, there is nothing we take more seriously than the safety and well-being of ____.” Although well-intended, I’ve read many COVID-19 notices that blur together in a sea of stress-inducing sameness. They are ignorable even though the subject is gravely serious. That’s not helpful.

Don’t chime in about your concerns about a global health crisis because you feel you must or because everybody else is doing it. At best, you’ll be ignored. At worst, your band risks causing offense or sounding desperate. Gartner analyst Augie Ray defines and addresses this risk in a post shared recently, Beware of Virtue Signaling or Outright Greed in Brand Communications About COVID-19. “Virtue signaling is when your brand conspicuously expresses its values without actually taking actions to live by those values. Today, it is not enough to tell consumers you are aware of and reacting to the pandemic—everyone is,” cautions Ray. When content is specific, purposeful and focused on the audience—regardless if it’s pandemic-related or not—it succeeds. 

Go Beyond Marketing. And it’s Okay to Talk About it. 

Rally your audiences to support a truly noble effort. Use your channels, audiences and marketing might for good. Don’t fear talking about it. Your positive acts yield value beyond charity, and that’s good for everyone. We all need hope and levity right now, which is a problem your brand might be able to solve with creative good deeds. 

This should go without saying, but skip the grand gesture if you’re only doing it solely for P.R. This shouldn’t be about you, it’s about your audience, first. Enough said.

The dated direction to run your brand like a publisher is relevant once again. Only now, the purpose isn’t to sell to audiences, it’s to lift them up when you can. If you need to step out of your marketing circle and advocate for a policy change or customer service initiative, do it. Act quickly and be ready to adapt as the situation changes. Keep producing quality, mindful content. Your organization or business has survived and hopefully thrived since its start because it provides value to its audiences. Now is not the time to hide that value. Share it.