How to Market During a Crisis. Short answer: Don’t.

Since COVID-19 pandemic and subsequent global anxiety of what will happen next, there have been millions of emails, tweets, and messages sent individually and from brands. Twitter estimates that there is a COVID-19 related tweet every 45 milliseconds.

In addition to managing personal anxiety, marketers and business executives/owners are facing unprecedented questions in a crisis that is open-ended and could affect every brand, business, individual, and supply chain. People are looking for information, connection points to calm their fears, and support.

What they are not looking for: brands marketing to them or epiphanies on life from the “Personal Brands” of VCs/Founders/Executives.

Lets quickly chat about out why (and then we’ll get into what to do)

People are worried about where their next meal is coming from, whether their loved ones (or themselves) will get infected and what that means, the lack of information, losing their jobs, paying bills, and so on. There is little headspace right now for anything else. There’s just enough for trying to stay calm.

(1) Brands Marketing to them: people want information on how to survive, not why your beer is the “beer of #coronatimes.”

(2) Personal Epiphanies from VCs/Founders/Executives: these are largely seen as “privileged classes” that are often out of touch with the majority of people. This “class” has the option to get additional childcare, ability to hop on a plane (or a private jet) and escape, minimal worries around paying for healthcare. This list goes on.

While communication is important, and brands cannot stop marketing altogether, here are some guidelines that may help:

1. Know the purpose of your brand.

This is about knowing what your company does and not just what it stands for. Brand and company are often used interchangeably and at this time, it’s really about what your company does. For example, Shopify’s platform allows companies to run from where they need, so when Shopify’s employees had to start WFH, the company provided $1,000 per employee for work from home supplies. Amazon and Salesforce committed to a small business relief fund because their ecosystems rely on and serve these customers.

2. Focus on what your customers RELY on you to do.

Instead of creating new things to attract customers that are outside the norm, identify what your customers already rely on you for. Google rolled out free access to their Hangouts Meet video conferencing capabilities through July 1, 2020. Slack rolled out resources for transitioning teams to remote work. If you are an event company that canceled major events, take them online. If you are a company that uses events to market your services, DON’T take those events online. If you are in the business of providing mental health services, increase capacity to do so. If you are not in that business, don’t capitalize on the world’s anxiety.

Notice that the brands being applauded are not the ones creating something “new” for you to buy, participate in, or consume outside of their core company product. The ones being appreciated are doing what they can to increase capacity to support what you already rely on them for.

3. Evolve your tone of voice.

Evolve your tone of voice on a day by day basis, as the crisis changes. It is important to understand how vulnerable populations are being affected by this crisis. Certain types of humor are not appropriate right now, empathy is. However, empathy works when it is applied outside of the world you know. At this time, it’s important to avoid calls for giving thanks, being grateful, staying positive. Instead, provide support, reach out to say hello, and be a foundation for your customers to rely on.

4. Share, once.

The key to being genuine in this moment is to know when to share and when to stop. A letter from your CEO is good once. Your life epiphanies can be shared once. Offer to support is relevant once. Checking in on your customers is genuine once. After that, it is opportunistic marketing. Regardless if you think it is or not.

5. Listen to the collective pulse, not yourself.

What you, as an individual, need or believe right now is not what your customers need. It is CRITICAL to remember that. Their economic, life, mental, etc. circumstances are different. As marketers, founders, executives, investors: you are not privy to those circumstances. The collective pulse lives outside of your social circles and your needs. If you are not continuously interacting with people outside your social circles, you are not aware of the collective pulse, you are only aware of yours. Step of that circle.

In times of crisis, people want credible information and reliable companies. If you have important (and credible) information to share about the crisis itself, share it. If you are a retail/e-commerce brand that can keep the public updated about merchandise stock to prevent panic-level buying, that’s valuable information. If you are a company that understands distributed workforces and work from home policies, share that knowledge.

As brands, and their leaders, look for meaningful ways to engage during an unprecedented crisis — remember that how you behave is more meaningful than any brand message. In fact, if your behavior + brand message does not match, people will remember.

And that’s the crux of it: people will remember how you made them feel. This is a time to scale back, know when to stop, and take a pause to be thoughtful. Reaction marketing (copying what others are doing, not listening to your team, being out of touch) is rarely the right call — even more so during a global pandemic.

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