PR visions : Japan and Sweden time to shine!

Getting ready for what’s next: A global view of press relations

In this series, I interview international experts in press relations with whom I have been fortunate enough to work in recent years. In the face of this global crisis, I find it fascinating to see the similarities and differences in our analysis of the situation. After Germany and the United Kingdom, we continue our world tour, this time interviewing our partners in Japan and Sweden about their visions of the world afterwards.

Akemi Ichise, President and CEO, Allison and Partners K.K., Japon, Tokyo

Go beyond COVID-19 with the “new lifestyle”

A State of Emergency was declared by Prime Minister of Japan on April 7 to be effective from April 8 to May 6, which was extended to May 31. Though the declaration covers throughout Japan, requests for stay at home/close stores were partially released in some prefectures except 13 prefectures including Tokyo.

People except essential workers had to mostly stay at home even during the Golden Week holidays which became a stressful holiday season for most of us.

Though with the government subsidies for workers/stores/mid-small size companies distressed by COVID-19, economies have been deteriorated to date and will be in coming months.

In our struggle to cope with the situation, we have been obliged to live with the “new lifestyle”: so called “tele-work” (work at home via internet tools/teleconferences), on-line shopping, online medical interviews (this was allowed only for limited cases before COVID-19), the amazingly “online Buddhist memorial services”(!) and so forth. According to the government, it is essential to live with the new lifestyle since the fight with the Virus should continue for a long run.

The fact that we are forced to live with the new lifestyle may become a breakthrough for the Japanese society to leave our traditional accustoms such as paper-based documentations, too much rely the face-to-face communications in a variety of daily life situations, work at office by commuting in a crowded train, etc. The new lifestyle may push us to evolve the society for more advanced digital lives free from traditional habits.

With such a progress in the society, the style of media relations has been also changing:

teleconference media briefings/interviews; more content-based works, etc.

By changing ourselves and our lifestyles, we may be able to go further beyond COVID-19 in a short timeframe, I presume.

Madelene Kornfehl, Co-founder Cloudberry Communications Sweden, Stockholm

While it is common knowledge that things have not been completely shut down in Sweden, we have certainly needed to adapt a different approach to our business in these unprecedented times. So as business and life goes on, we realise that the international communications market has obviously been affected, leading to a slight decrease in operations and while we have not yet seen any major changes in our industry, we do note slightly fewer requests from new customers.

On the other hand, for some companies, such as those with digital services, we actually notice an increased demand for our services, and have even gained some new customers as a result.

 We′ve been thinking a lot about what good can come out of such a crisis and believe we can use this as an opportunity to collaborate in different ways to solve social challenges, and strengthen our work in digital environments.

 With this in mind we chose to take part in and advocate to our clients, the IT & Telekom f?retagen′s movement #Vitecherupp wherein the IT industry has come together to contribute in various ways in order to manage and meet the epidemic and effects. We were initially invited to the initiative via one of our customers and have since selected customers of our own who can actively contribute to the initiative.

We have been impressed by the industry as a whole and the vast collection of companies tasking themselves in joining similar initiatives to help solve some of the problems we are facing. Hack the Crisis is an online hackathon organized by DIGG, Hack for Sweden, Openhack and The Swedish Government. The mission statement is to design, test and execute ideas for the future of Sweden and the world. To gather creative ideas and develop concepts in an attempt to create solutions helping us make further progress in the ongoing resistance.

 Another great example of this collaborative mentality is the decision by one of our customers; Bolt, who have offered free taxi rides to healthcare workers in an attempt to lessen their exposure to risk and allow them more time with their families at home.

"We wanted to find something that not only creates value for the healthcare staff, but also for all the drivers who are struggling and this initiative is the result of that work," says Nils Wijkmark, Regional Manager, Northern Europe, Bolt.

Don't miss next week's upcoming analyses from China and the United Arab Emirates!