This Time Will Be What We Make Of It

Small businesses and startups are demanding in the best of times. Most struggle to make it long-term, and in the case of the latter, most fail. And yet, these organizations are the lifeblood of our economy and account for half of the jobs in the United States. During times of crisis, the challenges facing businesses of all kinds are exacerbated. This is precisely the moment to find out what you and your company are made of. This crisis will not last forever and many entrepreneurial-minded people will be a critical part of the recovery.

“It’s our ‘Rosie the Riveter’ moment,” says fashion-supply chain entrepreneur Lisa Morales-Hellebo, referring to the iconic image from World War II when women took over factories to manufacture equipment for the war effort.

All over our country and the world, people are adapting to our new reality. This is the time to innovate, this is the time to try those things that we've been 'too busy' to do, this is the time to embrace change and take action, it is NOT the time to shrink our activity, our commitment to serving our employees and our customers. Take a look at how fast many companies have adopted to remote working, despite years of resistance and the hand-wringing about the downsides. It works, and downsides be damned, it can be even more productive than a single-minded idea that offices are the only way to conduct business. Imagine all the meetings where everyone finds every reason why something CAN'T be done. Now, most everyone is finally looking for solutions.

Brands that move and adapt quickly are going to win. Jennifer Kaylo Ruscin points out that ecommerce has exploded for many brands with 50% increases for many items just over the past couple of weeks. Is your brand ready? Have you adjusted inventory levels to keep channels that are growing in-stock? Do you have alternate fulfillment methods that rely on traditional channels? All of these things seem pretty basic, but the time to act is yesterday, not by thinking about what might work and spending a couple of weeks on planning. Her tips for adapting now are here:

Imagine all of the shoppers that are trying your brand for the first time or using new services like Grocery pickup. This is the opportunity to gain wallet share and keep it for good. Will Phillips created a nice review of Krogers service here:

While it wasn't perfect, Kroger waived its fee, and Will got most of his items. So many new shoppers are trying services like this for the first time... surprise and delight them. It's also a time to anticipate shopper's needs, while Kroger was out of the now coveted toilet paper, it could use its first-person data to notify Will when it is back in stock.

I had a related experience with Gogo internet service. I was reviewing my Amex statement and noticed the recurring charge for its services. I was livid. Even though I knew I could simply have the charge reversed from Gogo's customer service it was just one more thing. It's pretty obvious that almost no one is flying anywhere for a while. Imagine if Gogo had proactively reached out to let me know it was putting my service on hold until this was over. How much goodwill and customer equity would that have built? I can imaging this being a discussion for a couple of weeks within the company with no action. This is the problem, and the opportunity, that exists in many companies RIGHT NOW. Stop debating and get something done.

In a pre-Covid19 world, ordinary corporate content was fine, you could get away with it. Not today, it will get lost. That 2,000 world white paper? Nobody cared before Covid19, nobody will care now.

This is a golden opportunity to communicate. The quote above was shared by Tim Hughes from his Digital Leadership blog. As he points out, the difference is the nature and authenticity of the content. There is a massive opportunity to connect, support and inform without selling, push marketing, and providing absolutely useless noise. Internet traffic has spiked just as many advertisers have pulled back. Snopes traffic has surged 44% in the past week and yet it's advertising has fallen. What an opportunity for brands to connect in relevant ways without interrupting people along their journey. Many are likely having multiple daily calls on strategy, or have simply pulled their funds in fear of impact to their own bottom lines.

This situation is also the golden opportunity to deploy the most valuable asset a company has to communicate, its people. Content is the job of every employee, not just the marketing department. A company is the sum of its people and the relationships they build. We live in a new communication paradigm that is not defined by command and control but rather by decentralization. Everyone can and should participate.

Empower employees to create content that contents with people because it is coming from the people themselves. Inspire yourself and others to reach out and connect with as many people as possible is a legitimate and genuine fashion displaying their humanity and concern of others. My business partner, Ted Rubin, always makes a habit of sharing personalized content with people periodically. He has ramped up that practice right now, daily going through old photos in his phone camera roll and sending pictures of him with others to those people, asking how they are doing and if there is anything he can do to support them, at times merely sending the photo and nothing else... often to people he has not communicated directly with for a long time. You would be amazed at the connectivity, engagement, and goodwill it has created. 

“People will forget what you said, people will forget what you did, but people will never forget how you made them feel.” ~Maya Angelou

The time to act is now, stop waiting and lean in.