Coronacrisis: How tech brands are helping
It’s a tough period for us all.
COVID-19 is not only attacking our health, but it’s also disrupting the economy. Over a month, our lives, your employees’ lives and the lives of your customers, have changed dramatically.
From staying inside to working only at home, multiple difficulties come up. I myself am quite used to working often remotely. Yet as much as I like the stillness of my “home office”, nothing beats the richness of in-person conversations. Discussing a project with our team face-to-face or having lunch together just isn’t the same over Zoom.
But we know that health comes first. So for the past few weeks, the Fiction office has been closed and we’re all working from home currently.
This is a crucial time for companies too. While we have to self-isolate, we cannot pause our lives completely. We have different needs, many of which we meet with the products and services of brands that know us best as their customers. That’s why it’s essential for businesses to join the fight with whatever they can bring to the table for people.
There’s been no better moment to empathize with your users, community, and employees — scared, feeling stressed about the uncertain future, we’re all in the same boat.
With our team split between Sofia and Berlin, we decided to take a look at what brands from the local tech and startup ecosystems are doing and saying to help in these strange times.
Here are a few tips on how your brand can respond to the corona crisis.
Stay tactful and act on your values
Right now we need acts, not ads. Show us with practical actions what you have told us on your About page. Those values carved out in your culture manifesto? Now is a great moment to bring them to life. This is not the time to self-promote your brand or to just be pumping out product stories and funding round announcements.
Find me Cure, an online platform linking clinical research and patients shows this best in practice. This Sofia-based company is acting on the value of giving first by offering free access to clinical research data related to COVID-19. Find Me Cure is also sharing articles on relevant topics. Content is developed specifically for their target audience, such as how they can address their anxieties during the pandemic and what changes for patients in their clinical trials while the coronavirus lockdown lasts.
German digital therapy provider Selfapy is also a role model to follow. With their goal to improve access to care for people with mental health disorders, Selfapy’s decision to offer free psychological support comes as no surprise.
Other examples on our radar include the Bulgarian web hosting company SiteGround and Trending Topics, a platform for journalism on tech and startups.
As part of their #StaySafeBeKind initiative, impact-driven SiteGround will give away 12 months of free shared hosting to COVID-19 initiatives that inspire them.
Trending Topics is also staying true to their commitment of giving visibility to leaders and principles for positive impact. The platform is sharing live interviews with entrepreneurs and webinars to exchange know-how on topics such as working remotely and mental health.
A last note on this tip from us: if you don’t have a brand purpose or clearly articulated values, use this period to get your team together and agree on a joint philosophy of why and how you do what you do. Set your brand up for playing the longer game.
Help us cope with the isolation
Many are still struggling with their new daily lives. After all, none of us were prepared for being at home almost 24/7.
How can you help them adapt?
Share your own experience with telecommuting and remote team organisation. Give people tools to look after their mental health or compile a list of tips specific for your customers. Advise us with your expert knowledge.
The business communication platform Slack shows us well how to do this. From webinars through stories to reports, Slack is providing lots of helpful content. You can find articles, for example, on how to work remotely and how to nurture a team culture. What’s great to notice also is that the company is developing guides for specific audiences, such as for higher education distance learning.
Lesson learned from Slack.
Develop resources useful to your users and always consider: what content can we make to answer the specific needs of our customers during the pandemic?
Two companies that are following this mindset are Berlin-based Baze and Clue.
Personalized nutrition supplement service Baze had their expert dietitians answer questions by the public around immunity and supplements in relation to Covid-19. Menstrual tracking app Clue prepared detailed information specifically on women’s cycle health during the coronavirus.
The key is not to overload us just with facts. We already have enough information to sift through. So let us know what we can do for ourselves like Baze and Clue did. Provide us with a few actionable tips to improve our self-care.
Partner up to co-create new solutions
What a better way to show to people they are not alone in their fight against coronavirus than by teaming up with others?
Now is the time to leverage relevant connections. Partner up for a joint initiative, whether that is to address a common problem, rally for donations or create a new service for users.
Startup and tech campus Factory Berlin is taking a range of actions to help. On social media, the brand is providing helpful information every week such as active investors lists and links to schedules of free virtual events. Amid these efforts, they are also providing free soup to the nearby community and accepting donations together with electric bike provider Urban Drivestyle. Such an outreach to the local ecosystem is a lovely example of supporting your local community so that everyone can come out stronger from this crisis.
Mobile bank N26 is working with meditation app Headspace for customers to find their balance together.
Together with video live streaming service Twitch, online audio distribution platform SoundCloud is offering music creators a new way of earning money from Twitch livestreams.
Smart beehive monitoring system Pollenity donated equipment to support Imagga, an image-recognition startup, who are developing a novel early diagnosis application for infectious diseases that utilizes thermal-imaging cameras.
Some guiding questions to get you off the ground here include “What are some major new problems that people have now?” and “What kind of partner do we need to solve them together?”. Yet, keep in mind most the kind of impact you want to create.
Support learning and professional life
For those working remotely and staying home, now is a great opportunity to block off time for learning. Yet not all of us have this chance as some have lost their jobs due to Covid-19 and they need all the help they can get in finding new work. How can you support their professional lives? What can your brand do to help others learn more?
Whatever you are giving away free content or open access to your app, it will definitely help users. Everyone likes free stuff. The book summarizing subscription service Blinkist, for example, included more free original shows and booklists for users. Babbel, a language learning platform, decided to share one month usage of its app at no charge to all students affected by the school closures.
A role model to follow here is Enhancv, a web platform for creating resumes. The company initially made the Pro version of its resume builder available for free to all people who have lost their jobs because of the coronavirus shutdowns. Later on, Enhancv made this feature available to everyone so that even those who may be at risk of being laid off from work can build their resumes.
Brands need to stay flexible and adjust their efforts as the lockdown evolves.
It’s obvious to think of a giveaway to your immediate customers but how can you help your fellow humans? Showing your customer-centricity may not be enough in this period. Being people-centered matters most now.
Ask, listen and be there when needed
Connect to your base directly through your channels. Learn how our needs evolved and show us how your brand is understanding us now.
We’re all uncertain and in need of some compassion. Ask us a question. Start a conversation with us without asking from people to subscribe or open your link. We could all use some empathy now… and whatever exercise we can get in the meantime, whether it is for our mental or physical health.
If you are looking for inspiration on how you can do that, 7Mind and 8fit are your go-to sources.
The health and fitness app 8Fit announced free live streamed workouts every weekday in addition to giving away their app to new users for a month.. What matters here more is not just what they did, but how they did it and that is with empathy. You can see their brand tone is very compassionate and calming with phrases like ‘We’re here for you’ and ‘We’re in this together’. Their messaging is tasteful. It feels empathetic, not pushy and exploitative of the situation.
Meditation app 7Mind also has a similar approach. To support people’s mindfulness, the brand started live meditations with the message of #gemeindesamdaheim (meaning, #togetherathome). Their announcement starts with ‘You are not alone’. In other posts they invite people to ask any questions they have.
One of our previous examples SoundCloud also did that by asking users how they are feeling about the cancellation of events and music shows.
If there is any takeaway here beyond being considerate for your customers, it is this: show you care for the person behind the screen by just having a simple conversation with them.
A final note from us
We’ve all seen in the past few weeks a large number of donations and initiatives dedicated to fighting this pandemic. With our tips here we wanted to show that you don’t have to be the biggest brand to spread goodness and offer help in these challenging times.
Our pieces of advice here are not the cure-all for how your organization should act and speak. But we do hope they are a starting point for you.
We also realize there are many other wonderful actions and messages by other brands.
So, if you know of an initiative that we have not included here in this article or that you think deserves more credit, please share it in the comments below.
