A quick take on today’s communication strategies
Not all hope is lost. It’s just a matter of humanity.
There’s no need to say how the coronavirus has reshaped both our personal and professional lives. Coworking is now mainly digital, internal communications are centred on safety and damage control, newsletters show the brands’ efforts to cope with the pandemic… I mean, how many of us have received emails even from the café we’ve been to that one time on the other side of town just to get some wifi?
It sounds great to know that there are people out there who don’t give up and try to keep the business running despite the harsh times. However, newsletter, notifications, social posts with company news and strategies to keep alive can look like examples of business-centred communication. That is, a kind of communication mainly focused on their work. In this way, one could fall in the trap of highlighting just its work and its goals.
An article on Sifted, the startup column of the Financial Times, reported how some companies might be “attempting to capitalise on our house-bound state to sell us some more stuff we don’t really need”.
However, the same author admits that this might sound a bit unfair. At the end of the day, we’re all in this and companies need to run their businesses. They have employees — maybe with families — debts, bills, fixed costs that cannot be delayed, and so on… They will have to have a return eventually.
The point here is not to understand whether some companies are worse than others or give less than others. Sure, some did pass the message to be careless enterprises, as Virgin who asked its employees to take weeks of forced unpaid leave, while just a fraction of the net worth of its founder, Richard Branson, could repay all these salaries.
While other companies that reused their manufacturing plants to produce scrubs, ventilators or masks, passed a strong message of cooperation and goodwill during the harsh times — like Armani, AMI Paris, Chanel, Dolce & Gabbana. After all, having companies that make their clothing manufacturers produce medical clothing is also an almost-to-zero-cost strategy for an exponential return in the marketing strategy.
We’re all in this and companies need to run their businesses. They have employees — maybe with families — debts, bills, fixed costs that cannot be delayed, and so on… They will have to have a return eventually.
In any case, whatever the industry you’re in and however big your company is, you should never forget that it is in these hard times that one’s actions are most remembered.
A human-centred marketing approach might sound pretty obvious for many: the very core concept of marketing is based on paying attention to human customers, of their trends, behavioural patterns, profiles, and so on. However, these times of crisis forced us to discern what we truly learnt from what we are just trying to convince people on LinkedIn that we did.
Companies — and by “companies” I mean the humans behind the communication, the board, the CMOs — are falling short of implementing strategies and campaigns designed to hit the human needs behind the paying customers (or companies, in case of B2B). After all, when faced with difficulty, it is easy to fall in a self-centred trap and ignore all the exogenous aspects of your business.
Lately, I had some great course sponsored by sound connections I have on socials, but the high rate of online courses, meetings, webinars, or whatnot that deal with the pandemic crisis in a superficial way is just a further index of a looting system where publicity and brand traction are more important than to actually help the community we want to build and thrive into. Oscar Wilde would be proud, but the reality is far away from the engrossing allures of Aesthetic literature.
I guess that, as a brief conclusion, my point is that we are all customers of some companies, both as people and as companies. We already know how we’d like to be contacted, how we’d like to be addressed, there’s no excuse for a bad output. Maybe we focus too much on seeing our companies as a detached entity from ourselves.
But branding is an emotional process. People like to feel personally connected to the companies they buy from — especially if they’re startups currently serving a small customer base.
Don’t forget that it is in these hard times that one’s actions are most remembered.
Talks and articles on huge expansion opportunities are filling up the Internet — given the amount of time people are passing on social media during the lockdown. But every expansion strategy it’s empty if it’s not supported by a sound communication strengthening the loyalty of your habitual customers — and just then to have expansion goals through social or whatever tool you deem necessary.
Before designing a marketing campaign — whether it is a small editorial plan or an investment in a solid ad campaign — try to walk in your target customers’ shoes and ask if what you do is truly adding value, because now more than ever your customers will remember your actions.
