Go Digital

Social media is the ideal tool to engage with followers and the larger community. According to new research from the British Heart Foundation, 55% of UK adults say they have spent more time on social media since the start of the lockdown. This highlights the potential influence even one post can make if it's shared with the right audience. Leverage existing thought-provoking blog content with pertinent information to create engaging social posts for your client's followers. 

The value of social media is that the conversation doesn't have to end with your followers. Use hashtags to comment on trending news, and join the larger conversation on relevant topics to shape executives as industry leaders on platforms, including LinkedIn, Facebook, and Twitter. Social listening tools can help determine who drives the trending topics of online conversation, allowing you to give suggestions to your client about when to partake and add value by sharing thoughts with a strong perspective.

Transform Your Events Strategy

Many large-scale events, including Apple’s WWDC, Infosecurity Europe, and Cannes Lions, have digitally pivoted. Online events allow people to tune in from anywhere across the globe without travel expenses. According to the Web Summit CEO, digital events have been so successful that the future will consist of hybrid events featuring online and in-person elements. You have a unique opportunity to position clients as thought leaders because they can speak directly to a large audience, compared with in-person conferences. Therefore, you should tailor the client's messaging to resonate with a wider net of people who might be interested in broader trends.

Online events can also help maximise your digital strategy. You can use keynote or panel videos to create easily digestible and shareable clips on Instagram stories and TikTok and reach new audiences that may have not tuned into the event. You can apply the same strategies to company-wide events that were planned for the year and create hybrid elements that enforce social distancing but keep everyone engaged. Consider dynamic online tools to bring people together virtually, such as digital reality for immersive experiences, along with these effective strategies to elevate digital events. 

Build Relationships with New Reporters

Even though the mainstream news cycle changes rapidly and it’s important to be mindful of pitching sensitive topics, trade reporters are interested in receiving the sector-focused perspective and news updates. Take a look at media covering your client's industry and reassess if there are new reporters to introduce yourself to and offer unique commentary with a sector-focused spin.

It’s also important to consider how your client's brand or executives can add value to the business leaders and media at this point. Resist taking advantage of the global pandemic, and ensure you share helpful thoughts that can positively impact a certain industry. If you have the right expertise, now is the optimal time to distribute it to a world and media hungry for meaningful solutions.

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Rachel Busch is a Senior Account Executive in the Corporate and Public Affairs practice at the agency. She focuses on external communications and media relations strategies for global technology accounts.

Although cities globally hold their Pride events at different points in the year, many fall within June so they line up with the anniversary of the start of the Stonewall Riots in New York, which lasted from June 28th until July 3rd. Stonewall is largely credited as the birth of the modern day Pride movement. What started as riots against police brutality in New York (led mainly by black trans members of the community) would evolve into marches around the world demanding acceptance, visibility and legal protections for LGBTQ+ folks.

This year will be different due to COVID-19. Most Pride marches have been called off to prevent further spread of the disease, and while there are plenty of fantastic events taking place online, the absence of Pride as a physical presence this year is very strange indeed. It’s a big loss for the community, particularly at a time when lockdowns have hit LGBTQ+ people particularly hard.

Why Pride still matters today

The biggest misconception people outside (and inside) the LGBTQ+ community have about Pride is that it’s a big party. It’s easy to see why. These days many marches feel more like a carnival than a protest. However this ignores the true history and purpose of Pride. Pride started as a riot and has always existed to protest and push for progress and change (and yes, to celebrate the progress we’ve made).

Pride matters today because the LGBTQ+ community still faces big challenges, at home and abroad. It’s still the norm for LGBTQ+ people to be bullied, and too many people still die by suicide. The rights of the trans* and non-binary community are continuously under attack and far from secure. And there are still 70 countries around the world where homosexuality is illegal, and 12 where homosexuality carries the death penalty. There is lots of work to do, and plenty to still protest.

Pride also does not exist within a vacuum. As a community we need to recognise that some parts of our community have made progress, but left other parts behind. The Black Lives Matter movement is just as important in the LGBTQ+ community as it is within wider society, and this year many Pride marches have evolved into Black Trans Lives Matter marches, with more in common with the first Pride marches in the 1970s than with the Pride parties of the last decade.

How brands can be allies

Most members of the LGBTQ+ community want brands to support us. However what is really needed and appreciated is authentic support, rather than virtue signalling. COVID-19 will lay bare this distinction. This year, it will be clearer than ever which brands genuinely supported the LGBTQ+ community, and which were doing so for some free advertising at Pride.

Being a true ally to the community means supporting LGBTQ+ causes when times are tough. If you’re a brand that usually spends big on sponsoring floats in Pride marches, but then pulls all budget out of Pride because marches are cancelled, it becomes pretty clear that this support wasn’t genuine.

The same goes for those rainbow logos. It’s nice when a brand changes its logo to include a rainbow, but what does it actually mean? If it’s not backed up by actions, it’s an empty gesture, and you’ll be called out pretty quick.

Listen to queer voices

Brands who want to authentically support the LGBTQ+ community need to listen to queer voices. The best place to start is with your own workforce, and this is why company Pride groups are so important. Action should be led by members of the LGBTQ+ community, and brands should then leverage their resources and platform to make these voices heard.

Brands should also put queer creators front and centre. Does your brand want to do something that authentically supports the black trans community, for example? Then write the cheques and pay for black trans content creators to help you create campaigns and shape your actions. Doing the right thing usually isn’t free, but building a brand that fights for causes alongside its customers is worth its weight in gold.

Pride is more than just a month

There’s a running joke on social media that as soon as Pride month ends, brands immediately ditch the LGBTQ+ community. It’s all tied up in the idea that brands never really cared, and it was all to sell a few more rainbow T-shirts.

If your brand truly wants to support its LGBTQ+ workforce, advocates, and customers, it needs to do so all year. As someone who volunteers with an LGBTQ+ network helping with brand partnerships, I can tell you we’re always way too busy in June, and never busy enough during the rest of the year. PR and marketing folks love to link activity to specific days and months, but this is one of those cases where you don’t need to wait for June to do something positive for the queer community.

How to support the LGBTQ+ community all year long

When it comes to your brand, here are some simple ways to make sure your support for the LGBTQ+ community is authentic:

• Make it last after Pride month ends, and explain what you do to support LGBTQ+ people all year. That might be your policies for employees, or the causes you put your weight behind.
• Build from the ground up, starting with your LGBTQ+ employees. Your Pride group should lead on how your brand can engage with and support their community.
• Support queer talent, whether that’s with the influencers you engage with or the media you pitch to. Again, don’t stop talking to them at the end of June.
• Donate time and money to community groups on the ground doing great work. If your brand can’t make an impact directly, work with and empower activists who can.
• Be ready to defend your position. There will always be trolls on the Internet and those that take issue with a pro-LGBTQ+ position. A true ally needs to stand up and keep re-affirming their support even in the face of criticism.

Pride matters deeply to most members of the LGBTQ+ community, which is why it’s so disappointing when brands see it as a sales or marketing tool. Authentic support is hard, but as consumers make it increasingly clear that they want to buy from brands that align with their values, it’s worth getting right. As Pride month draws to a close in this unusual year, brands have an opportunity to step up and show that even without the party, Pride matters all year.

Andrew Rogers is an Account Director at Allison+Partners.

According to research by University College London (UCL) its takes 66 days for a new consumer habit to form.  Given that many of us have been in lockdown for at least as long as this, which behaviours stay and which disappear?

Kantar’s Nicki Morely recently summarised this very well.  People will adopt new behaviours when they are easier to maintain, more convenient, more satisfying and more rewarding than previous behaviours. 

So as well as new behaviours we are also yearning to go back to past behaviours to reassure ourselves that life can indeed go back to ‘normal’.

Whilst this situation is unique, we have lived through past disasters and uncovered useful insights..  A good example of this is the BSE crisis in the UK in the 90s which saw beef sales fall by 40%.  However, within just six months the industry pivoted adding in sourcing and tracing to reassure consumers, and beef sales were back to normal levels. This highlights how entrenched habits, in this case Brits love for beef, are fundamental to our lives and our culture, and they can be difficult to break.

So what trends are we bearing in mind?

A desire to have more fun

Many trendwatchers have identified a pent-up demand for rewards and special treats after this period of forced abstention.  We have witnessed in the last decade a rise in the treat and experience culture.  Many major luxury brands, for example, have tapped into this desire with ranges or tasters at lower price points to satisfy this demand. Think Karl Lagerfield vs H&M and Kate Moss vs Top Shop that inspired many a fashion related collaboration. 

To ensure fun continues – we are seeing brands across consumer categories get a virtual makeover. Sports, virtual experiences, and creative innovations like ‘cocktails to your door’ as growing markets will continue. With a long-term impact on live events and concerts it will be interesting to see how the industry responds.  Certainly, Sony is already predicating a final coming of age for virtual reality.

Thinking forward for trends

Covid has made the consumer pause and think inward – how do I care for myself and my community and what habits do I want to change. Many are rethinking how they travel to work in cities and big towns and how they enhance the quality of life around the home. Not surprisingly perhaps, among the latest trending items are garden furniture, bikes and electric scooters. It will be critical for marketers to not only stay on the pulse, but also anticipate how their products and services can best support the consumer in the near and distant future. 

Supporting our local enterprises

We have also become ultra-aware of the fragility of our economy, businesses, and jobs.  Many local enterprises that we took for granted are now struggling to create a profitable future in a changed world.  Small businesses account for three fifths of employment – they are vital to the economy.  We’re seeing a positive, rising trend on social media to call out and support these local businesses and entrepreneurs who literally won’t survive without our support.  Britain, our small businesses need us!

A rush to comfort brands

There is a need for familiarity in a crisis – comfort food, recognisable brand advertising, brand communities andknown CSR-friendly brands. Now people will be even more focused on these and will be specifically looking out for brands who are supporting key workers and the environment.

A good example of finding comfort in what’s familiar – the rise of watching out box sets. We’re seeing consumers reach back into the noughties and nineties for gold standards like The Godfather, Friends, Game of Thrones and Big Bang Theory.

The role of online

There is no doubt the Internet has ‘saved’ many in retail through this period.  There is data everywhere on the superfast growth in mobile payments, contactless delivery, online health services and ecommerce for non-traditional items like furniture. Online sales at Majestic wine, for example, has increased by over 200% year on year. Whilst it’s clear there is a need to focus on the online offer more than ever before, this will be a high-water mark for online shopping.  We will be left with a permanent increase. However, giveniven most consumers already shop omni channel, this is unlikely to change in our new normal. 

Will the office as workplace ever recover?

For those of us who normally work from an office, the sudden and prolonged lockdown has shown what can be achieved remote.  It is an amazing and powerful argument for many companies to rethink.  Twitter, for example, has already announced a permanent shift to homeworking for those who can.  With social distancing measures dictating the short-term –many offices cannot go back to the old normal. And with these measures in place, what is the value of a physical presence?  A more permanent change is likely on the cards for many companies. 

Work-life balance is shifting

For those who can work from home there is a new challenge of creating a good work-life balance.Perhaps the the gain in commute time has allowed some to take on new hobbies.  It certainly relieves some of the monotony.  We are seeing a visible growth in hobbies on social media like baking, gardening, painting, drawing, photography, dancing, home cooking, fitness, and gaming.  Where passions have been ignited, we expect these trends to stay. On the other side, people are finding it difficult to step away from their computers – many working much longer hours and starting to feel a sense of burn out.

A new respect for key workers

We see every day a new respect for key workers. Not just those in the health services, but shop workers, refuse collectors, delivery services –everyone who is supporting the household  in these challenging times. We might see a shift in brands starting to tap into these groups as the face of their brand vs celebrity tack. Only time will tell.

A new level of care for the environment

Images showing environmental recovery – clearer skies in Hong Kong and Los Angeles, and sheep wandering around towns – continue to go viral. With everyone at home, the environment has benefited, and it is continuing to spark global conversations around the importance of sustainability measures. Will these images inspire a meaningful change in behaviour?  The previous recession nurtured a mass acceptance for less ownership and possession, particularly amongst millennials, and out of that came the sharing culture of Uber, AirBnB, Zipcar and others.  Given the complexity of this issue, the jury is out on this one.

Final thoughts

The economy will recover and we will get back – we just do not know the timeframe. It will be dictated in large part by events outside of our control, like a vaccine or a resurgence.  So for now, uncertainly will remain the new normal.  However, based on data from the previous recession, brands that implement a longer-term view, building plans around the right future trends and implementing growth strategies in markets with potential, have the opportunity to come out much stronger than their competitors.  

Jill Coomber is Managing Director, Integrated Marketing at Allison+Partners.

Students, parents, faculty, staff, alumni and institutional donors each have myriad questions that need to be carefully messaged and addressed, not least of which include:

• How and when will university spaces reopen and make it actually safe to return?
• How will online vs. on-campus learning and fee decisions be managed?
• How will international student admissions and enrolment be impacted if prospective students are unable to travel and take campus tours?
• How will virtual, online stewardship keep alumni and donors engaged and connected – and for how long?
• Are traditional methods of marketing outreach still effective?

Institutions that take decisive action to navigate these concerns creatively, empathetically and transparently will emerge stronger. They will build credibility and goodwill, especially when unpopular decisions become necessary. Schools that hesitate or underestimate the importance of their communications will face a long, uphill road to reputational and financial recovery.  

Here are four important communications initiatives school officials should focus on now to engage students, parents, faculty, staff, alumni and institutional donors to shore up their long-term brand reputations:

Double down on digital

With in-person events and activities no longer viable options, colleges and universities need to shift resources and maximise the full range of digital capabilities to stay connected to their audiences online. Effective use of virtual events, online campus experiences, emotionally engaging videos, email newsletters, search engine marketing, social media influencer engagement and online conversation mining will give university communities the ability to remain visible and relevant during this prolonged time of social distancing.

Keep employees engaged

Now that everyone is working remotely, it’s even more important for school officials to increase connections with faculty and staff who are on the front lines with students, parents, donors and other stakeholders. While broad, one-way, top-down updates are customary, schools that rely on these types of communications exclusively will miss out on opportunities for valuable community temperature checks. Instead, communicators need to embrace virtual Q&As, department-wide video conferences, real-time employee surveys and other forms of remote social engagement.

Narrative matters

During times of high anxiety, people want reassurance and empathy from their leaders. They accept that decisions are being made in real time with incomplete and ever-changing information. While stakeholders don’t expect perfection, they do feel entitled to explanations of how and why important decisions are made and what they mean for the future. And they expect sincere contrition and quick corrections when leaders make the wrong call. 

Now more than usual, it’s important to consider how difficult messages are delivered and how they support an overarching brand narrative. Do stakeholders have a reason to trust and believe? Are they inspired? Can they see themselves as valued contributors to how the story gets written – or are they merely pawns in a game over which they have no meaningful control?

Tell stories that inspire

University marketers and fundraisers already appreciate the power of emotional stories about how higher education transforms lives and how researchers make new discoveries. Now is the time to delve even deeper and mine for inspiring stories that showcase the ingenuity and resilience of students, faculty, alumni and staff. 

How did professors come up with innovative ways to engage their students online? Which staff members truly went above and beyond the call of duty? How did the school community rally together to support each other or the community at large? How have alumni stepped up to hire students, establish internships and give back in new and inventive ways? 

These types of stories yearn to be discovered and disseminated.

While higher education faces an uncertain future, communications decisions that institutions make now will have brand reputation implications that endure long after students return and campuses once again safely open their doors.

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Paul Breton is an executive vice president in the Corporate + Public Affairs practice. He counsels executives to communicate effectively and tell memorable stories that result in positive earned media coverage, stronger brand reputation, greater stakeholder engagement and more revenue. He has 20+ years of PR and marketing communications experience and specialises in executive thought leadership, brand storytelling, crisis and issues management, internal communications and employee engagement. His industry experience spans education, technology, financial and professional services, entertainment and healthcare.

Lydia Wilbanks brings more than three decades of consumer and corporate communications experience to Allison+Partners. She specialises in target market analysis, strategic planning and thought leadership. After owning her own award-winning agency, she now focuses on communication counsel and market development for Southeast based organisations.

In the near future, uncertainty will continue to characterise every aspect of our lives. In the UK, France and Germany, one thing is certain – we know society will be forever changed. COVID-19 has forced us all to slow down and reflect on what is working and what can be improved.

So, what does the ‘new normal’ look like? The discussions have already begun. We need to rethink how we live, work and travel. We need to consider how to better acknowledge the high value of people in health and social care, retail, education and more. And we need to better prioritise our personal lives, families and mental well-being. Perhaps, everything will change. Nothing is off the table right now.

From a communications perspective – we need to balance being cautious with being proactive in positive ways. Companies that are thinking innovatively and looking to solve problems that help people will succeed in generating positive brand awareness that they can carry into the future.

To be an effective communicator in the current environment, we recommend implementing three key steps:

1. Stay supportive – the threat isn’t over yet

Right now, it’s all about seeing the bigger picture and how your organisation fits into that.  Ultimately, every group represents a small part of a huge and complex system. It’s all about supporting each other to stay functionable as well as working towards one major goal: avoiding the spread of the virus in order to save lives.

So, how can you support this overarching objective? Whether you’re reorganising a manufacturing site to produce life-saving ventilators or you’re pivoting to sew masks instead of making clothes – decide what it is you will do to show you’re committed to playing your part in helping people during the crisis. In doing so, you will be remembered for the responsible role you have taken in society. It is imperative that companies and organisations not only exist to be successful, but also act to do good and develop trust within their community.

2. Don’t brag about success – stay humble

The majority of people, companies and state institutions are currently facing a plethora of challenges, from unemployment, to salary cuts, to failing business operations. The states are struggling to stay ahead of the infection wave on one side and are trying to support individuals, companies and organisations on the other in order to minimise disruption to the economy, avoid widespread bankruptcy and mass poverty.

In many European countries, government loan schemes and the existing social security systems are supporting the people to buffer the worst effects. It’s an incredibly difficult time – many small businesses and jobs are reliant on financial assistance for their survival. Therefore, any communication where a company is highlighting how successful they have been under these circumstances is inappropriate. It’s even counterproductive as it labels the successful players as a kind of ‘war profiteer’ – someone who is capitilising on the pandemic, rather than sharing the burden and supporting others.

No doubt there will be entities that are successful during this time – for instance companies selling food and groceries or important medical devices. However, it is how these companies are offering and communicating their products and services that will make the difference. For instance, reducing prices, services for the elderly and vulnerable, charitable giving and clear ethical programs will help companies be remembered in a positive way. It is critical that these activities and engagements come from the heart and that companies act authentically and transparently to give people confidence in them.

3. Become part of the better tomorrow

To create a better tomorrow, organisations need to think about how their product, strategy and company culture are perceived now. They need to evaluate their role in the new normal, map out a plan and take action.  

One organisation cannot solve every issue, but they can be really good at helping overcome one or two specific challenges close to home. Leaders need to review what products and services they sell and how they can do this better for people, the environment and the world.

If you have something to contribute – become a thought leader and have your say on what we can improve upon. Make sure your insights are valuable in the overall conversation and the aim of your communications is to explain how you are working towards a better tomorrow – not profiteering off the crisis.

The global pandemic is an opportunity to truly think and act globally. Together, we can all be a part of a better tomorrow.

 Heike Schubert is a General Manager in our German A+P office.

Establish the culture you want to see. Collaborate with staff to identify three to five core values that define a successful employee in your company and use them to recruit, onboard, evaluate and celebrate them. If your company hasn’t developed yours yet, start a conversation with the team about the strengths that help you weather the current crisis and get consensus on the most essential traits to grow the business.

Make time for facetime. Regular interaction between your leadership team and employees – via live, interactive town halls and educational events – not only enhances investment in the company’s vision, but also allows you to find out what is impact personnel. With staff quarantined at home, you can maintain communication by hosting virtual town halls, recording video messages from your leadership team and developing a CEO advisory council of staff from various levels, functions and geographies to share their insights on video chat. 

Be transparent about business challenges. During times of crisis, employees crave honest information about business performance and job security, and leaders who deliver this build trust and loyalty even when the news is bad. Solicit “Ask Me Anything” questions anonymously with an online survey tool like SurveyMonkey and have your CEO address them in a company-wide webinar. Given the ever-evolving nature of the global pandemic, biweekly sessions may be necessary.

Ask for feedback and act on it. It’s also essential to assess your team’s wellbeing and needs to tailor your internal communications and support systems accordingly. Conducting anonymous pulse surveys on a weekly basis will allow you to respond in real time as the crisis evolves. You also need to be explicit about how such input is being used. Neglecting this step can break down trust and will make staff less likely to engage.

Offer perks that encourage teambuilding. Job satisfaction is enhanced when employees genuinely like each other, so it’s essential to offer perks that encourage them to have fun with each other and senior colleagues while they’re on the clock. Working remotely makes it harder for people to bond with each other, but there are many ways to boost happiness at work via video calls: group workouts, quizzes, book clubs, Friday night drinks and home tours in the style of “MTV Cribs,” which offers all-access tours of celebrity homes.

An honest, two-way relationship between leadership and employees will not only foster a strong workplace culture but will also help you realise great solutions to meet the challenges of COVID-19 and build a group of motivated volunteers to implement them.

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Partner Courtney Newman leads learning and employee engagement for more than 500 A+Pers in the U.S., Europe and Asia-Pacific. Her A+P career highlight is the agency being a perennial PRWeek Best Places to Work winner.

Unlock the Value of Your CRM Data

All organisations should take another look at their CRM database. No matter the sophistication of the marcom tech stack, the CRM system can yield a gold mine of avenues for marketers to pursue. Minimal contact information, even for key daily contacts? Figure out how to add name and phone number. Ask the sales team, search for the e-mail naming convention. If need be, call the main number! Extensive information about various influencers and decision-makers? Email them your most recent industry information. And if you don’t have something recent, create it! Build an infographic, create a survey and share results. Find a video of an industry thought leader and share the link. And there is a lot of room in between.

Understand Your Customers

In addition to strengthening relationships, marketers can also seek data. Now is the time to become a LinkedIn expert. Is the LinkedIn insight tag loaded on your website? Add it and begin learning more about the visitors to your website, and a small re-marketing campaign will be a quick addition. From there, you can learn more about the content consumed by the industry you market to. That provides direction for the next piece of content you’ll produce.

An organisation with extensive CRM data can use LinkedIn’s matched audience features for an ad campaign that will reach the exact people in the CRM database and others at the company. Then, the current environment presents a perfect opportunity for marketers to declare which other contacts at a current customer can influence upsell or retention. We often work with clients to define the buying group early in the sales cycle, but it is just as relevant for retention or upsell. Determine the title of end-users for your product, understand who may have originally created a vendor search with the assistance of procurement and investigate who within a client organisation helps determine “value.” Small marketing campaigns to reach those individuals at an important client will help make them advocates for you – either in the face of a competitor, or for an add-on that will more fully use your product. 

Make a Plan for Growth

Now you have an expanded audience of influencers for whom you can adjust existing content or create something new. By this point, you have built an account-based marketing plan without ever making the declaration. You know the companies who are your current customers, thus similar companies are easier to determine. You know the content those customers consume. You know the titles at those companies who use your product. Now you can fill out your database with added information to strengthen relationships.

Of course, LinkedIn is just a first step, and many marketers already use its capabilities to the fullest. Microsoft, which owns LinkedIn, has slowly expanded opportunities to use LinkedIn profiles outside of LinkedIn itself. You may now be in a position to push further with data vendors who can help build a stronger and updated list, media vendors who can help you target the exact people you want to reach, trade publishers who can burnish your thought-leadership credentials, and other martech providers who can help push you up the learning curve. There’s no shortage of martech vendors.

But the best way to put them to work for you is to first understand your customers, the individual influencers and end-users within customer organisations, and what they need from your product or service. From there, whether you are equipped to go fast or you must go slowly, upgrades and upsells are the clear next steps. 

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Terry McDermott is a digital evangelist with expertise in turning objectives into strategic plans and developing, executing, and measuring demand generation programs. He leverages his background in direct response techniques, including CRM marketing, to develop insights that build lead gen and customer acquisition campaigns. He also creates account-based marketing programs for key prospects, selecting targets via predictive modeling and creating marketing automation campaigns to nurture and score leads. Additionally, McDermott advocates for investments in emerging digital products, technologies and channels, while building and managing teams to generate leads, boost sales and increase awareness.

Given the industry was robust and strong before we entered this crisis, there is no reason why innovation and tech should not resume once the worst of the pandemic is over, albeit with a pivot in communications and messaging to reflect the “new normal.”

Here are some of our recommendations on navigating the current environment to position your business for success in the “new normal.”

The need for interesting stories is stronger now than ever.

From talking to reporters, though a few are now being furloughed, most titles are carrying on business as usual: it is fundamental that they keep producing interesting content for their audiences.  While there is currently less opportunity to get into the national media with so many pages prioritising COVID-19, trade and specialist titles are actively looking for new material. Trade reporters have shared that they are snowed under with pitches on working from home and security challenges, so make sure the story you are pitching something new – or at minimum a new and fresh perspective. Take a look at what has already been written and take time to think about ‘what’s next,’ – what are going to be the next key issues as we evolve from the current situation. Make sure any PR stories about COVID-19 are not self-promotional, but rather how your technology is making a positive impact during these unprecedented times.

B2B marketing needs to reflect what’s happening to customers and prospects alike.

Many B2B organisations are facing new sales challenges; either because their sales have dropped off dramatically or because of a huge volume of increased demand. Using marketing to combat these problems effectively will enable businesses to look to the future, by deploying short-term sales cycle initiatives to address immediate needs, while not ignoring the long-game plans to ensure business continuity. For example, if your business is making their services free or discounted to help others survive, this should be communicated effectively.

As marketers we should position ourselves as a source of vital information. Guidance on what to do in the short-term to cope with the unusual market conditions as well as guidance on the strategy for the longer-term as we come out the other side. This is not the time to retrench from marketing.

Revisit your messaging.

Do you have a clear brand purpose? If so, then relevant, detailed messaging can evolve from that, but you must be explicitly clear to avoid stakeholder confusion. With your workforce most likely spread across the country – or the globe – it is easy for mixed messaging to slip through the cracks.

But messaging is just the first stage. Tonality is equally as important, as is empathy for all those affected. This is the time for brands to engage customers authentically to maintain trust and brand loyalty. No exaggerations, no hype, just sober, transparent facts about what is being done.

Business must continue, the more we do, the more quickly we can begin to economically recover and come out the other side. However, be sensitive to the situation, no one should be capitalising on a pandemic in an exploitive way.

In reality, the tech sector could ultimately grow as we rise to the occasion and innovate quickly to meet the needs and demands that are placed upon us by this unprecedented situation. Innovation is the mother of invention after all.


Sue Grant is a Managing Director for B2B Tech in the UK office. 

It seems – at least in the immediate wake of the announcement – the partnership is a glimmer of hope emerging in the tech world. Not just in the sense that Apple and Google have provided a potential solution to flatten the curve, but also in the sense that collaboration itself may counteract some of the negativity that plagued large tech companies for much of the past two years.

Could COVID-19 be the unexpected antidote to “techlash”?

Two years ago, the word “techlash” was born, marring reputations within Silicon Valley and beyond. Big Tech’s integrity was called into question as scrutiny over companies’ ethics, social responsibility and intent skyrocketed toward an all-time high. A wave of negative reactions to tech’s power and influence dominated headlines. And the likes of Amazon, Facebook and Google were pushed into the government spotlight with calls for regulation, data responsibility, privacy and so much more.

As we headed into 2020, the world’s trust and patience had begun to disappear. The one-time tech darlings were well on their way to becoming Public Enemy No. 1.

Then COVID-19 hit, changing everything we once knew and forcing us to adjust personally and professionally to a new norm. Technology – whether we consciously think about it – has made all our adjusted lives more palatable. We’ve connected with colleagues, teachers, friends and family on a variety of platforms like never before. We’ve relied on fixed and mobile networks to maintain business continuity, tested bandwidth boundaries and proved a work-from-home life, while not desirable for some, is actually feasible and efficient. And we’ve relied on delivery services, telehealth and social networks to provide creature comforts when we’re all on edge.

We cannot deny technology has become our connective tissue. But great power begs for great responsibility. COVID-19 hasn’t changed that.

Apple and Google took an admirable first step with their collaboration. And, yes, it’s initially helping big tech emerge from the shadows of techlash. However, we must see how the partnership plays out. Promising “privacy, transparency and consent are of utmost importance” was appreciated as both companies look to stop the spread of coronavirus. But maintaining that public, socially responsible commitment well-beyond this critical time will be the most important test.

After all, this pandemic has potentially permanently changed the way we live. As a result, we now have even higher expectations of technology, its reliability and security, and its impact at a global scale.

COVID-19 hasn’t cured the fundamentals of why techlash emerged in the first place. Techlash was never just about a company being “bad” or “capitalistic.” Instead, it was centered on the actual business decisions tech companies made – decisions that called into question and sometimes egregiously compromised our privacy and security. Even after this pandemic, consumers, governments and businesses will still demand transparency and consent, while debates around greater, more serious regulation will continue.

But what COVID-19 has done – and will continue to do – is trigger tech to be accountable. Thus far, tech companies of all sizes have responded. The glimmers of hope are there. Security measures have tightened. “Tech for good” partnerships have emerged. And some techlash-ed reputations have started to mend.

So maybe, just maybe, the tech world gained a little more perspective – a game-changing perspective that will help define how every company needs to operate to regain brand trust today and well into tomorrow.

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Karyn Barr is Head of B2B Technology at Allison+Partners and primarily counselling clients inside and outside of Silicon Valley on global growth strategies, brand positioning and C-Suite thought leadership programs. A long-time agency veteran, she had led award-winning work across numerous industries, including artificial intelligence, data analytics, additive manufacturing, cybersecurity and more. Karyn resides in the Bay Area where she and her family are rehabbing their 110-year-old home.

While there are plenty of opportunities right now for wine and spirits brands, packaged foods, beauty products, home décor and fitness programmes, other companies are not as lucky. Travel brands and goods, clothing meant to be worn outside the home, restaurants, hotels, anything that gets you off your feet and outside your home – they all struggle. Still, other brands find themselves in the middle. For example, food and alcohol delivery services are at a peak and business booms. Yet, they have no marketing budget to put toward influencer programming because consumer demand is too high and the need to have influencers promote no longer exists.

As a blogger who also specialises in influencer relations at Allison+Partners, the influencer landscape seems in flux. Based on conversations I’ve had with fellow influencers, some said their partnerships are quiet, although a handful of brands still reach out to do exchange partnerships instead of paid partnerships. Others said partnerships have been put on hold until further notice. I’ve had a handful of my partnerships put on hold until later months, with the goal to resume as normal once things improve. On a brighter note, I’ve also had a few partnerships that focus on the “at-home” angle, which shows brands still believe in the influencer industry even during this stressful time.

That said, even in this weird flux, the pandemic won’t drastically change things for all influencers. For example, home products brands will continue influencer marketing and might even put more budget behind their programmes as marketing around COVID-19 quickly becomes a saturated space. But once the pandemic is over, where will influencer marketing stand? Will budgets be the same? Will influencers still be able to effectively influence? Where will marketing needs turn?

At first I was hesitant to post content – both content surrounding my daily life and paid content. I polled my audience to see if anyone disagreed with posting branded content, and about 85% of the people who took the poll said they don’t mind #sponsored content. Of course, I wanted to be mindful of everything going on. But it was nice to receive reassuring messages that noted how Instagram is an outlet that gets people away from the negativity going on in the world and provides happy and positive entertainment.

I have lost count of the number of times a kind follower has told me this is “the content we need right now!” So for me, my goal is to bring positive and humorous content to my channel. Because if I feel like I need that, I am certain others do too.

As a micro influencer, I believe business for micro influencers will stay the same and potentially be more fruitful – brands with a decent budget will want to reach a variety of people across the nation and partner with more influencers, as opposed to one macro influencer. It will vary based on programme goals, but micro influencers – those who people feel like they can relate to more on a personal level – will have ample amounts of opportunities in the coming months. Brands will have a chance to build up their content channels too by using unique pieces of content from their influencer partners.

I sense brands are quiet right now because they are planning their comebacks once things improve and normality returns. For brands that move forward business as usual during the pandemic, they try their best to partner with influencers that make the most sense for them while respecting our new norm.

I have taken this time to re-evaluate my brand goals and plan for the year ahead. What do I want to accomplish and what do my followers want to see the most? People still want to relate to something real. So, I will continue to walk through this new norm with a mindset of being relatable and real.

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Lexi Holden is a senior account executive at Allison+Partners and the founder of Lex and the City, a blog focusing on city life and style in Chicago and beyond, with a love for fashion, fitness, beauty and travel. Lexi has partnered with brands such as Swarovski, Madewell, Park City Tourism Board and Lyft, among others.

Allison+Partners’ measurement and analytics team shared the insight that “with physical distancing recommendations in place, there’s a growing ask from consumers for creative ways to entertain family members at home.” Likewise, employees expect their employers to maintain company culture and engage them in a WFH environment. An online community can be an essential tool to connect with both audiences.  

If your business is new to an online community, these best practices will help you create a successful space for your business’s employees, clients or customers to connect. 

Consider your audience needs

A community is not only an effective way to push out communications, but it can provide needed support and guidance for team members or customers. Community managers and administrators are responsible for maintaining that safe space while giving individuals the opportunity to manoeuvre together through these unique times.

Fitness class provider Frame launched FRAME ONLINE offering instant access to all of its online classes to help members look after their physical and mental health from home. It is also driving up engagement with its community via social media by running Facebook lives and competitions on Instagram.

Another example of a brand that has adapted to COVID-19 well is Pret a Manger. The coffee and fresh food chain has published the recipes to some of its popular products including its dark chocolate chunk cookies and kale & cauliflower macaroni cheese, much to the excitement of its loyal customers.

Allison+Partners launched an COVID-19 Resources and Updates microsite and internal community to keep employees informed of company-wide announcements and resources related to this evolving situation. An agency priority remains to ensure employees, clients and communities are safe and healthy. We also launched support forums to encourage sharing work-from-home tips and tricks, photos, client best practices and case studies. Employees use the forums to share photos of pets, creative work from home setups and their new school-aged co-workers. It’s become a needed connection as we all navigate uncertainty and prepare to adjust to a new normal. 

Put collaboration first

For employees, a community can help keep projects organised and moving forward, especially in a virtual environment. Teams can brainstorm best practices and work together to pivot marketing strategies and manage a crisis in real time.  

Try the below tips to manage an effective virtual collaboration group:

• Create topic communities and resource sharing groups for specific workstreams, deliverables and brands. This will help everyone manage their workloads and stay engaged. 
• Reward participation through gamification, employee spotlights and content features. 
• Provide ownership. Give employees responsibility as moderators. By doing so, message threads will be well-organised and aligned with the community guidelines.
• Launch user-generated newsletters. Incorporate daily or weekly emails summarising leadership announcements, news updates, relevant discussion threads and link directly back to the community to drive participation. Learn more about the importance of internal communications during a crisis here. 

Run virtual gatherings

While companies and organisations have cancelled many in-person events, they have created ways to bring their gatherings online. Virtual gatherings are new for many, and an online community can help make the transition easier. 

Brand Innovators, an exclusive community of brand marketers from the world's top brands, is known for gathering regularly for thought leadership conferences and social events. As the world has pivoted to the virtual sphere, it had no choice but to pivot as well. To remain a safe haven and resource for the marketing, adtech and media industries amid the chaos, Brand Innovators launched a virtual livecast series that brings online its community the greatest portions of its physical events, such as compelling keynotes, panel discussions and fireside chats with industry leaders.

Netflix extended its party feature, so friends and families can watch the same content in real time while social distancing. Not only does it give viewers a virtual experience of being part of something and connecting with others simultaneously, it also provides the ability to discuss in real time. 

We all must continue to adapt to a new normal, which involves creating innovative methods of connecting online. By learning from this pandemic’s threat, we can build lasting opportunities for customers, colleagues and businesses alike to inspire and innovate together online. 

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Stephanie Cinque is a Content Marketing Manager at Allison+Partners and specialises in online community management and building successful engagement strategies for clients. With a passion for social media management, influencer marketing, and the beauty industry, Stephanie works on several integrated projects for the agency. Born and raised in New York, Stephanie currently resides in sunny Arizona. 

Consumer behaviours have changed dramatically in the last few weeks. Instead of movies and restaurant meals, millions of families eat together and play board games at home. Instead of commutes with a stop at Starbucks, professionals make their best efforts to remain productive while home-schooling their children. Many others have been displaced and need support just to meet basic needs.

As the landscape changes rapidly, it will be key for brands to scale up their listening efforts.  Not just to better tailor their marketing messages, but to identify new customer needs that can foster rapid innovation. We help our clients in this key area, combining AI and human analytics that extract signal from millions of digital conversations, allowing them to understand how hearts and minds react to an uncertain world.

Rapidly turning insights into solutions is the next step. Peloton quickly created all-new workouts for families. Craft breweries rapidly stood-up digital storefronts and pivoted taproom-focused business models to delivery and pickup. Marketers will have to seize strategic opportunities with the digital infrastructure they already have or use new resources they can quickly add.

Brands will also need to assess if they have credibility to deliver helpful new offerings. For example, Netflix doesn’t have much history in the respiratory mask business. But what if it partnered with Hasbro to deliver virtual board games within the Watch Party environment? Marketing leaders must step back and reassess their product roadmaps to evaluate whether 10-degree shifts, digital extensions or new partnerships can create an unexpected innovation to benefit both society and the business.

A few key questions can prove helpful:

• Will a new product meet socially-oriented definitions of value in a COVID-19 world?
• Is the supply chain stable – will consumers have sustainable access?
• Can you, suppliers and partners protect workers’ health and safety?
• Can the product be launched authentically, with care and goodwill?

In the midst of a global crisis, it’s easy to overreact and put everything on hold. Yet studies of prior crises and downturns have found the companies that double down on innovation significantly outperform those that make drastic cutbacks. Leaders must assess their portfolios and make immediate pivots. They must ramp up listening to deeply understand changing consumer needs and identify new ways to socially innovate. It’s more important than ever that brands make bold, socially conscious moves to help build a better, stronger and more resilient world.  

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Paul Sears is Executive Vice President, Integrated Marketing.  With nearly 20 years in advertising, social media, content and brand strategy, Paul spends most of his time helping clients sharpen their strategic focus – at the brand level or for individual products and campaigns.    

Wouldn’t we all love a little more clarity? So, what’s the right strategy for engaging with brand ambassadors in times like these - from the big names and recognisable faces you’ve hired, to the broad swath of dedicated brand fans who have stood by you through thick and thin? It’s important to recognise there simply isn’t a one-size-fits-all solution – we must examine each brand ambassador program individually. It might be helpful to share some of the best practices we’ve developed for our clients, as we’ve helped them navigate these troubled waters. 

Here are some guiding principles to engage with your brand ambassadors in this time of uncertainty: 

• Reach out now. Don’t wait. Let them know the brand cares about their situation 
  Remember that brands are human constructs – they live in consumers’ hearts and minds. Celebrities, influencers and brand ambassadors are all in the same boat right now. They’re adjusting to a “new normal” just like everyone else. Simply reach out to see how people are doing. Ask about their kids or what they’re binge-watching. Share information, links and tools that might be helpful. Talk business later, but let the brand be human first. Brand ambassadors will remain a critical pathway for us to connect with the community, gain insights and maintain support for our brand in the market – but only if we nurture them, support them and keep them informed. Working together, we will not only get through this, but we will create a better world in the process. 
  
  
• Make sure they have enough supplies, including your products 
  Supermarkets are doing double-duty to keep critical essentials in stock, but their hard-working staff struggle to keep up. High streets have closed and may not bounce back. Maybe you are an essential brand and have the ability to directly send your supporters a little product. Or if not an essential item, maybe a little swag could lift spirits. Surprise and delight moments will be an appreciated bright spot. It's an opportunity to reduce anxiety and be supportive to show the brand cares, which will pay dividends in the long run. 
  
  
• Read the room. Listen and engage in dialogue. 
  Social listening and monitoring have never been more important. It’s tricky to positively impact conversation in a meaningful way without seeming self-serving or tone deaf. It depends on the conversation landscape, which changes by the minute. Right now, we see social media challenge after social media challenge – people tagging their friends to do push-ups, people sending photos of their dogs and encouraging their friends to send photos of their pets, Christmas lights to spread joy, sharing workouts and recipes. The need to connect right now during this time of isolation is apparent. Likewise, establishing the same two-way conversations with brand ambassadors is critically important. Our supporters are our eyes and ears and boots on the ground who can help provide us with insight into how to connect. They can help us uncover what keeps consumers up at night and surface unimagined ways the brand can be helpful right now. 
  
  
• Grant even more access - be excessively transparent - “People support a world they helped create.” - Dale Carnegie 
  Providing influencers with more brand access will be important. As mentioned, listening to brand ambassadors to help inform the content strategy could be very impactful. Set up one-on-one virtual meetings with a brand representative and the influencer to talk about product news, initiatives and/or key differentiators. This gives the influencer a sense of being a true partner and insider. Or, host influencer roundtable meetings with a group of partners on conference calls with the brand. Making the brand ambassadors feel as if they are part of a focus group that helps the brand achieve its objectives together will go a long way. But note, it’s still important to get the product in the hands of the brand ambassadors and ask them what kind of content they think their audience will be receptive to engaging with. 
  
  
• We can’t be self-serving right now - we have to help 
  To cut through the noise meaningfully, it’s more important than ever to root influencer or brand ambassador programs in insights and human truths. Aligning to business objectives will never change. Raising awareness has shifted to helping the community – brands must authentically make a difference during this difficult time. 

A great proof point is  Nike’s recent use of brand ambassadors for its 'Play Inside' to 'Play for the World' campaign.  As athletes, its ambassadors know how to train and stay active. So, the ambassadors helped elevate the brand and its “Just Do It” motto, which has always inspired the community to lead and take action. Frankly, we all need to stay active both mentally and physically. The campaign offered Nike’s key messages while contributing to the broader mission of keeping the public safe. “Play for the World” checked all the boxes. 

Striking the right tone is critical. It’s a balance between the brand ambassador's areas of expertise, the brand’s voice and objectives, plus what audiences really need right now.  Influencers can continue to help brands, and now more than ever, brands need to give back. 

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Lucy Arnold is a Vice President on our Digital team and specialises in creating engaging digital strategies including influencer relations, campaign development and management, community management and paid media. 

Claudia Vargas is a Director of integrated marketing and brings a wealth of knowledge in strategy and account management. With experience in paid media, brand ambassador programmes, content development, multicultural campaigns and social media community management, Claudia leads several integrated projects for the agency connecting the dots to drive results for clients. 

Not quite as well understood, however, is something we all face today: how to manage a business during a crisis that affects everyone around the world. The unearned existential threat is just as real as with a scandal or tragedy: the difference is resolution lies as far outside your power as the cause. As Nassim Nicholas Taleb pointed out in his farsighted treatise “The Black Swan,” it is just such events that pose the greatest incipient danger.

Fortunately, while we are unused to facing the consequences of pandemics, the regular cadence of systemic disruptions over the past century have taught us much about keeping the enterprise afloat in the face of a perfect storm. Our study of systemic disruptions and the patterns of business response to them provides a useful framework for understanding the crisis at hand.

In dealing with the disruptions caused by COVID-19, businesses must work through six phases, which we have termed Shock, Orientation, Command, Recovery, Bump and Equilibrium (or “The New Normal.”) Understanding each of those phases, and how and under what circumstances businesses move between and address each, offers us the beginnings of a charted course through and out of them.

SHOCK

Shock describes the phase when the disruption has happened or is in progress. It is characterised by disorientation, a constant lack of sufficient information and an escalating stream of events that threaten to send a business careening out of control. Panic is barely held at bay. Companies either act for the sake of action or are caught in paralysis, unable to respond.

ORIENTATION

This is the first step toward a coherent response – the process of understanding the full potential breadth of the disruption and its potential consequences to the business. During this phase, initial responses get considered and discarded, and they eventually lead to the first concrete steps, often tentative, to begin addressing the disruption.

COMMAND

The process of taking charge of the business in the face of the crisis is Command. The situation still evolves, but company responses become quicker and more assured. And gradually, the company is able to move beyond playing catch-up and start thinking ahead, even as the crisis continues to pinch the company, its people and its customers. For the COVID-19 crisis, this phase will last until the numbers of daily infections have begun to taper off, and then for an additional 28 days after the last significant outbreak. Unlike Shock and Orientation, the business no longer controls the timing of the phase: it can only manage through it and begin laying the groundwork for the next three phases.

RECOVERY

Recovery is the period during which the actual emergency has passed, but either the company, its customers, its supply chain or all of the above have not yet returned to normal operations. This is when a company will be able to assess the damage or in some cases the positive impact to its operating system and begin to adjust to what is likely the new equilibrium for the business. In some cases, this will mean business will remain diminished for some time, necessitating investments in order to enable or speed the process. Businesses that grew during the crisis will now likely return to normal, and adjustments will need to be made.  For both cases, the process will be organic and will show quick progress.

BUMP

At the completion of the recovery, many businesses that experienced significant disruption in demand during the crisis will face its opposite: a sudden and short-term surge in business that represents pent-up demand for its goods or services. While ostensibly a “good problem,” this is an extraordinarily challenging phase. Keeping customers happy while walking the line between meeting the short-term surge and not over-investing in people, plant and equipment requires almost constant adjustment and superior communications with customers, suppliers, the media and employees - sometimes hourly. Indeed, the Bump is a mini-crisis, a sort of aftershock that will again tax the business.

EQUILIBRIUM

Equilibrium describes what many refer to as “the new normal,” a tempo of business sustainable over an extended period of time. For some companies, this will be more business and a larger market. Others will find the shock of the crisis leaves them with a smaller market. This period will require the largest adjustment of all – a recognition that while the crisis is over, the business landscape has been indelibly altered and the company will have to go through jarring adjustments to accommodate that change.

Each of the phases above is its own business continuity challenge, each demanding its own response. Start understanding each of those processes now – if you wait until each phase is underway, you are already behind. The optimal time to begin the effort of planning your way through these stages is during the Command phase, during which the nature of the Recovery, the magnitude of the Bump and the outlines of the Equilibrium will become clear. The sooner you are prepared for each of these, the more likely your business will survive it.

FIRST STEPS

Start by ensuring that your organisation is operating as a high-performing team with all the right players on board, including outside advisors. Make sure everyone on that team understands these phases and their inherent dangers and opportunities and that they share your vision of how to emerge stronger than before the coronavirus unleashed itself on our world. Once you have done that start to ask these questions:

• Are you using data, analytics, and social listening to understand how your stakeholders are thinking and feeling, and how that is evolving daily?
• Could you be working more closely with those dealing directly with customers and key stakeholders to understand what they are hearing and what they think?
• What innovation needs to take place to ensure your organisation is prepared to prosper in the New Normal?

Finally, remember your response may begin with, but cannot be limited to, the matter of your company’s survival and future prosperity, or even monetary donations. Organisations and their leaders will be remembered for how they responded to this crisis and how used their full resources to help resolve it. At some point in the future reporters, employees, new hires, prospects, and customers will all ask, at least implicitly, “what did you do to help?”

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David Wolf is the managing director of Allison Advisory at Allison+Partners. He brings three decades of experience to his role counselling clients on managing the unique operational, communications and marketing challenges that arise when companies undertake change or address significant challenges in their operating environment.

Tom Smith is a strategic, highly skilled corporate communications professional with a proven 24-plus-year track record of leading and implementing corporate campaign programs. He has led numerous multi-million-dollar global accounts and as president of Allison+Partners' North American corporate practice, he brings deep capability in numerous industries, including financial services, hospitality, professional services, technology, education, healthcare and industrial supply. His specialties include integrated communications, corporate brand positioning, thought leadership, executive visibility, B2B marketing, influencer management, media relations and investor relations.

Be Human

Tap into the real people behind the brand to show the challenges when hotels are closed, airlines aren’t flying and attractions aren’t operating to highlight what your brand is doing to help. Show compassion and give viewers a glimpse behind the curtain. Don’t worry about the polish, but use this time to test, learn and create based on the real-time feedback of those following the journey. Work to build an emotional connection with fans and followers beyond destinations and offerings – on the human level. Those that do, will earn loyalty far beyond point value.

At Your Service

While your actual business remains closed, now is the time to encourage fans to take a metaphorical holiday in their own backyard by supporting local business and helping keep the economy alive. Providing consumers with ideas about how to get away in their own homes will pay off in the long run, especially for hotels that once served as living rooms for their communities.

Purpose is Powerful

Before the crisis, numerous studies demonstrated Gen Z’s preference for brands that contribute to social good and show purpose. With more time than ever to evaluate who we are in the world (well hello there, mindfulness!) and what contributions we can make for the future of the planet, this mindset of aligning with brands that have a shared purpose will extend far beyond the young generation. In this new communications landscape, a common purpose will be essential for survival.

Futuretripping

Urging fans and followers to #DONTCANCELPOSTPONE is one thing. But when the world does open for travel again, companies will need to put their money where their mouths are with competitive deals to ensure that coveted postponed trip is with them. Every travel brand in the world will battle to put heads in beds and butts in seats, so brands that want to break through will need to get creative with offerings and messaging.

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Emily Wilson Sawyer is a seasoned communications professional with 20 years of experience developing integrated communications strategies and driving creative ideation for clients, including international hotel brands, world-famous chefs, airlines, CPG products, restaurant chains and more. She is known for her creativity and break-through thinking and has been responsible for many large-scale award-winning and results-driving campaigns, including bringing the first food tech product to CES and pairing Hilton Hotels & Resorts with Onion Labs to launch its Hilton Urgent Vacation Care Centre. 

Every company, brand or organisation needs to know what they should say — and, importantly, how they should say it.

Companies and organisations also need to know what their stakeholders and audiences expect from them. What questions do these stakeholders have? What are their main concerns?

As global priorities shift, how do you pursue your business and communications objectives without striking the wrong tone with your key stakeholder groups?

More than ever, every company, brand or organisation must know:

• The top COVID-19-related questions your key audiences and stakeholder groups have for your company and industry
• The relative perception of your company or brand vs. competitors within the context of COVID-19
• The top positive and negative COVID-19-related discussion topics for your company (or brand) and competitors
• The top positive and negative COVID-19-related discussion topics in your industry
• Key communication channels and personas in the conversation
• Top influencers in the conversation who are driving opinion

Knowledge of the points above is critical to understanding how to move forward within this new global context. Not knowing the key points above is like flying an airplane blind in heavy fog. Data and insight are necessary to navigate safely.

At Allison+Partners, we generate these insights to help our clients effectively and efficiently communicate with their customers and stakeholders.

We helped a national outdoor recreation company understand the most frequently asked COVID-19 related questions and helped them create a Q&A document so they could prepare their hundreds of franchisees with the right answers for local and social media.

We worked with a global communications technology company to help them understand what their customers and stakeholders want from them right now, so they can address the most important topics and make sure they are perceived as a leader in their industry, both internally (with their employees) and externally.

A company, brand or organisation’s reputation can be made or broken during this important time for the world. Clear winners and losers will emerge based upon how they respond to the COVID-19 challenge. But one thing is for sure – Nothing will ever be the same. 

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David Richeson has more than 20 years of experience in data and insight-driven integrated communications, business strategy, creative writing and technology. He has developed engagement models on the cutting-edge of influence, focused on real-time communications, influencer strategy, micro-moment based marketing and behavioral economics techniques.

Before we get to the production realities of creating story content in a lockdown environment, it’s important to acknowledge a few key truths. It’s never been more important that everyone in your organisation works off the same proverbial, and sometimes literal, script. And you must take advantage of all the tools at your disposal.

This means being cleared-eyed and diligent about establishing the right tone for your narrative and ensuring you understand what stage of the Disruption Life Cycle we are currently in.

Understanding your audience is also crucial. Quick “pulse surveys” to gauge audience sentiment and an increased reliance on data to inform, measure and adjust your content are critical to avoid coming across as tone deaf within the current landscape. 

Finally, everyone needs to be brutally honest about the work required for good storytelling in these times. Minor tweaks to the same brand narrative you’ve used for the past few years probably isn’t enough to reflect how drastically the world has changed in the past few months. Your company’s vision and values, or even your origin story, are more relevant than ever but will also be pressure tested for their authenticity in ways you’ve never seen before, both internally and externally. 

At a minimum, crafting a good Story Brief that defines style, tone and content and gets buy-in from all stakeholders is essential to creating effective content right now. Even better, brand and story workshops gain extra importance in this climate and can be done easily over video conference.

Having worked with hundreds of execs on storytelling over the past decade, a huge takeaway for me is we all have the biggest blind spots when it comes to our own narrative. Often a CEO will be so proud of a specific talking point they wrote the night before, but truthfully it just sounds like jargon. Then over a lunch break, they will tell an amazing, off-hand story that ends up being the foundation for a truly powerful presentation. We all need feedback and collective discussion to uncover, refine and point ourselves down the right road for effective storytelling – whether that’s personal thought leadership or at a brand level.

Since I’d argue another key element in good content is brevity, I will try to keep the following short. But I think it’s valuable to share a few key insights our team has uncovered in the content projects we’ve undertaken since the pandemic began:

• The good news is anyone with a smartphone or a laptop has access to a high-quality camera. But that doesn’t mean you can expect them to be good delivering on-camera without help. Emoting without an audience is a difficult skill that requires coaching. As do framing, lighting and audio – which gain extra importance when you can’t use traditional editing tricks like cutting to B-roll. Anyone who gives a testimonial or interview should have access to a remote content and technical director to make sure they look and sound their best.
• Podcasts are another great content opportunity in the current climate, but they are consistently misunderstood. While technically you can just record a phone call and turn it into a podcast, the landscape is incredibly crowded and your audience will skip to the next thing if they tune in and your audio quality is terrible. Again, the good news is we can use remote applications that allow for localised, high-quality recording and specialised (and affordable) microphones can be shipped to participants. Here again you need experienced engineers and directors to enable everyone to succeed.
• The rise in video content captured over the past years has created a massive video library that many brands may not even realise they have. For every finished video you create, there are hours of unused footage that hit the cutting room floor. Plus, access to stock video libraries, like Getty, offer a whole other world of visual storytelling. With a skilled editor and creative text treatment, this existing footage can gain amazing new life to move your narrative wherever it needs to go, without sending a crew anywhere.
• No one knows exactly when we’ll turn the page to the next chapter of this pandemic story, but the last few weeks have certainly illustrated how fast things can change. And it’s important to remember video production is often a four- to six-week process. If you want a top-notch sales video to be done as soon as your teams began ramping back up outreach, you need to work backwards to start that process a month prior. The first few weeks of story development, concepting and storyboarding can all be done remotely and give you a jump-start ahead of the competition.

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Owen Clark is a senior director who leads the Allison+Partners Storytelling Studio and agency Media and Speaker Training offering. A former TV journalist, Owen has been with Allison+Partners for a decade and in that time has coached everyone from global CEOs, to regional non-profit directors (and a couple of rappers) on how to uncover and deliver an impactful story.

To that end, according to economic research consultancy Capital Economics’s March 2020 update, UK commercial property values are expected to fall about 10% this year. Real estate company CBRE’s Potential Impacts of COVID-19 on EMEA Real Estate report remarked that the hotel and retail sectors will be primarily impacted.

Moreover, a recent Investors Chronicle story pointed out that the COVID-19 crisis has put the UK housing market into stasis following the government’s advice to buyers and sellers to delay transactions so as to protect people from the virus. In fact Bloomberg and The Real Deal have noted property sales are on hold across Europe.

By no means is all lost for the real estate industry. First, it’s important to note there are marked differences between today’s economic crisis and the global financial crisis that forever changed the real estate industry some 12 years ago. What we’re experiencing now wasn’t initiated by a real estate event like the housing bubble in 2008. Rather, COVID-19 is a healthcare event that has largely put the global economy on hold until the Coronavirus “curve” can be flattened and significant progress can be made on a working vaccine. Economic fundamentals have recently been strong — for example, EU unemployment was at a record low of 6.5% in February 2020 according to Eurostat data the month before the widespread introduction of COVID-19 containment directives. Many industry experts believe that bodes well for a faster market recovery once COVID-19 is brought under control.

Secondly, market uncertainty always creates opportunities for smart, savvy and proactive companies to take a leadership stake in their markets, whether it’s communicating with their various stakeholders or marketing their brands in an authentic way to strategically position their companies for when the market fully returns.

Over the past several weeks, we’ve worked with our commercial property clients to navigate these unprecedented times with a wide range of communications strategies proving beneficial to their brands:

Crisis Planning + Response – When any crisis hits, the hope is that there’s been some planning in advance to anticipate the potentially negative impacts it will cause a company’s reputation and put in place some strategies that can offset brand risk among key audiences. Our property team has collaborated with companies of every size and type over the past several weeks to help them develop a suite of crisis-related materials, including:

• Media holding statements
• Key messaging documents
• Correspondence with staff and other internal audiences
• Blogs and other social content
• Press interview FAQs

Creative Earned Media – Engaging with the media during times of crisis carries a certain risk-reward element, and it’s not always beneficial to proactively pitch media on typical news stories, especially given their all-hands-on-deck approach to the COVID-19 pandemic. That said, real estate trades and business media have increasingly requested non-crisis-related articles about companies with unique stories to tell. There’s a growing sentiment among trade and financial outlets that readers want more coverage of business-as-usual transactions, like this story on a 12 property-strong portfolio acquisition ­­deal in Germany or this article about Belgium-based office developer Immobel which hired JLL and CBRE for its new office tower in Poland.

Strategic Thought Leadership – Crisis situations can often present golden opportunities for companies and their executive leadership to take an authoritative position in their communities on a wide range of issues – helping to build stronger brand loyalty and trust among their key publics. Architect and engineers from BDP achieved coverage in BBC Online for its role helping to convert London’s ExCel exhibition centre into Nightingale Hospital. Its Principal Engineer James Hepburn described how the construction required a unique approach and design to achieve project completion for the scale and in the timeframe required.

One way in which Allison+Partners helps its property clients in this capacity is through surveys and other data collection initiatives. Currently, one international firm has instituted a multi-phased “Work from Home Survey” to gather insights from employees about how their workday has changed during the coronavirus pandemic – information it will share periodically with key target media.

Stakeholder + Community Engagement – The COVID-19 pandemic, and the resulting economic retraction, has created a host of problems in the commercial tenant market, with retailers, small businesses, nonprofits and many other users finding it difficult to pay their monthly rents. Many owners have responded positively by establishing rent-deferral programs to ease the pain. This includes Landsec, which is agreeing rent deferrals with many retail and leisure occupiers in the UK, and Hammerson, which has deferred April rental payment for all brands in the Hammerson France flagship portfolio.

This situation will test many companies’ cultures, missions and values as employees lose the kinetic energy the physical office generates. Employers need to provide immediate, frequent and ongoing communications from leadership, and the existing content distribution strategy deserves re-examination as stand-ups and company meetings get cancelled and email volume increases.

As we move from the immediate shock of our current situation, consider communications in the longer-term period of isolation and the eventual return to a new normal. Each chapter of this story needs a fresh approach.

Here are steps to consider as the story evolves:

• Do your people see and hear regularly from your leadership? And do your leaders communicate in different channels? You might suddenly need a microsite, YouTube channel or digital company meeting. Or, you might need executives to create content on their smartphones where quick edits can add polish.
• Do you focus your communications on the human element that addresses your employees’ emotions and realities? In a time crunch, talking points might get cut and pasted from one communication to another, but this is something you’d never do in person without context. Keep your humanity front and centre.
• Are there ways to turn previous office customs into virtual experiences? Recognising birthdays, marking work anniversaries and brainstorms should not stop because your workforce is distributed. In the near-term, Zoom and other virtual services can help. Even after-work drinks have gone virtual.
• Do you survey your stakeholder community with quick pulse surveys and deeper assessments to get a better understanding of their emotional well-being and professional needs? Don’t assume you know what employees think because there’s no playbook here, and everyone experiences this individually at home. There might be something easy you can do for working parents who now home-school or for individuals who live alone and face severe isolation.
• Are you planning communications for the new normal? It may be weeks from now, but employees will want assurances it’s safe. The patches built to address today’s issues might need to shift again.
• Do your people managers have the tools and skills to manage a remote team? Compared with face-to-face meetings, a lot can get lost in email. Make sure your team has the support they need to communicate with employees and help them through this situation.

J.W. Marriott said, “If you take care of your employees, they will take care of your customers and your business will take care of itself.” The hospitality legend knew who had the biggest impact on his organisation – the people on the front lines. 

In this difficult situation, take some time out of your day to care for them.

If you'd like to sign up for our weekly COVID-19 updates, click here 

Todd is a senior vice president at Allison+Partners, where he leads a team of integrated marketers and brings together multi-disciplinary campaign elements to create compelling programs for clients.

The questions loom large: Will my funnel dry up? How will customers react? Will we have to reduce spend now and increase it later? What are my quickest times to impact? How can I accelerate deals? How is my brand or company going to rise above the noise? What are my competitors doing?

The questions are endless, but they don't have to remain unanswered. At this time, marketers and communicators should immediately rely on research, insights and optimisation to fuel a strong post-pandemic marketing and communications strategy.

Here are four easy-to-implement, quick-to-conclusion steps marketers can take to formulate a winning post-pandemic plan in what will likely be a hyper-competitive marketplace:

Run a quick marketing mix model (MMM), including time lag, to optimise spend. Once a costly, long-to-insight function, MMM can now produce results in days or weeks. If you haven't run an MMM exercise in a while or never, now is the time. They allow you to discover the channels that produce the most impact so you can allocate funds properly. Brands that know which channels move the needle and move it the quickest will win.

Survey your customers. The pandemic may have permanently or temporarily changed how your customers see your business. Now is the time to learn how they think about your brand, how their purchasing mood may have changed and other insights that can help you formulate a post-pandemic strategy.

Post-pandemic messaging, content and creative testing. Your customer's attitude about your brand, and its place in the world, could very well change in a post-pandemic world. Based on informed insights like customer surveys, you may have to change messaging, content and creative to meet how your customers now think about your industry, brand or product.

Are you going to do it in a bubble? If not, you need to implement testing to ensure you don't miss the mark. Some brands will miss it hard. Don't be one of them.

Improve your industry and competitor insights. Your competitors are up to something and your industry may change, possibly forever. Marketers or communicators that don't monitor their industry and competitors in multiple channels are likely doing their entire organisation a disservice, at best.

A post-pandemic world may be the same, or it may be different. You can't assume either. Therefore, the brands that invest in research, insights and optimisation today will be the ones that accelerate the fastest in a post-pandemic world.

Brent Diggins is managing director of measurement and analytics and can be reached at brent@allisonpr.com.

Yet, brands continue to step up. They donate cash and supplies to numerous organisations, such as The Trussell Trust and Shelter , as well as to their local food banks and support networks. We have even seen brands change their business models, like Dyson, which is now pivoting to make ventilators.  

However, many companies are unable to help. They need to help themselves. They need ways to reach their customers when the media is focused on the current news. They need to reach their employees, many of whom are working from home for the first time. They need new ways to keep their teams engaged and motivated.

Charity partnerships can help make a difference. These cause-related relationships are more than transactional – they are about making an authentic difference, positively impacting both consumers and donors. Here are ways that charities can help support a company:

Indirect access to donors and volunteers – Charities have strong and loyal donors and volunteer databases of individuals who support them. Newsletters and emails can be tapped to recognise a company and share its news as a partner.

Webinars, online content, events and conference calls - Charities are using new ways to communicate and reach their supporters. Whether through Zoom and Skype or social media channels, this is an opportunity for brands to provide thought leadership, guidance and support.

Employee engagement – Companies can build partnership with many different types of charities, whether in the arts, youth activities, health and wellness, etc. Most causes have employee engagement programmes. Traditional walks, runs, golf tournaments and raffles are on hold. However, charities can still host virtual events, post video content and provide tips for exercise, mental health and online projects.

Volunteer projects – Employees can still volunteer their time, even if they do so from home. Companies can work with charity partners to create a call to action, empower team members to make a difference… whether that is through a fundraising campaign, sending get well cards to social care homes and youth organisations, or donating gift cards. Brainstorm fun, easy-to-implement things.

Influencer relations – Don’t forget the power of influencers. Many charities, like brands, have celebrity and social influencers who support their causes. They can create campaigns that offer followers and donors positive tips, activities or a fundraising call to action during this critical time. Through a past A+P whitepaper, Powerful Connections, we found those who followed influencers authentically linked to a brand would either donate or volunteer at a much higher rate (33%) than direct mail. 

Remember, your charities are your partners – they are here for you in times of duress just as your companies are there for them!

If you’re a charity or not-for-profit in need of advice on how to navigate these challenging times, get in touch at scottp@allisonpr.com or sign up for our weekly COVID-19 updates.

Scott is a co-founder of the agency and leads Allison+Partners’ Social Impact group. Scott has extensive experience providing communications and crisis counsel to nonprofit organizations and developing board + ambassador training programs.

As a result, the brands and companies behind the products on shelf are in a paramount position. They have a unique and fleeting opportunity to connect with consumers in a way that helps settle and bring them comfort – something much needed during a time when there are more questions than answers.

As brands take advantage of this opportunity to connect with consumers in a new way, it’s critical they tread lightly. There is heightened awareness about how to communicate – and there is a right and wrong way to do it. Following are a few guidelines for brands and communicators to consider as they decide how to engage with consumers during this time.

Give Back. 

Food + beverage brands that have experienced a surge in sales as consumers stock their cupboards can use funds and resources to support those who struggle. Brands that can do their part to give back, must do so with no strings attached. Whether consciously or not, consumers want brands to step up, and being a good corporate citizen during this global pandemic will have a lasting impact on how consumers think about and support brands in the future.  

Continue to Share Brand News, But Be Authentic.

As food + beverage brands rethink their social media tone and content strategy to respect sensitivities, many use these channels to highlight scheduled product launches and find ways to relay their messages in an appropriate manner that is careful, considerate and relevant in today’s challenging environment. Brands looking to introduce new products or SKUs can still do so by leaning into a tone focused on bringing more lightness and brightness to the world, while also responding more directly to the pandemic and acknowledging the current issues the public faces. 

Encourage At-Home Brand Engagement. 

There is a tremendous uptick in sharing creative food dishes families make at home due to widespread social distancing recommendations. This introduces opportunities for food and drink brands to source creative recipes that tap into ingredients many already have at home and can test, create and enjoy. Consider leveraging a network of friendly social influencers who still develop unique content for their channels to help co-create these recipes and push out widely. Or consider taking it a step further and use social listening to identify consumers using your product and send out surprise-and-delight mailers with product to deepen the relationship.

Over-Communicate. 

Consider leveraging social media to keep consumers up to date on product availability to combat disappointment at the shelf. Use this channel to share where and when product can be found. Or if possible, consider pivoting to direct-to-consumer product deliveries as needed, even if in a limited capacity.

While the COVID-19 situation evolves, consumers will continue to look to the brands they know and love to find comfort during a trying time. If done with a tone of empathy, humanity and understanding, brands can not only strengthen the bonds they have with current brand advocates, they can also connect with new consumers and make them customers for life.  

If you'd like to sign up for our weekly COVID-19 updates, click here.

Cheryl Weissman brings 15 years of experience to Allison+Partners’ Consumer Brands practice and leads the agency’s food and beverage specialty. She is responsible for the strategic management of account teams within the category across the agency, supervising client activities, providing counsel and helping some of the world's leading food and beverage brands navigate the ever-changing world of public relations.

Set Clear Expectations and Engage Regularly.

Once the decision has been made to direct your employees to work remotely, increased and effective communication between managers and their employees will be critical to keeping your business running and your employees confident. Make sure to set clear expectations with your team on how you will work together remotely on projects. One way to immediately bolster your internal communications is to require more frequent check-ins. If an employee usually provides a daily report or in-person meeting with their manager, increasing that to two or even three touchpoints can keep everyone on track without adding undue stress to the system. Putting a premium on video conferencing or internal communications programs like Slack or Microsoft Teams is an effective way to make productive remote work more feasible.

Along with circulating business-specific communications materials, companies should also provide their employees with up-to-date information regarding COVID-19, gov.uk and WHO guidelines and company policies. This will improve internal processes because it ensures everyone has access to the same materials. This will also serve to reassure a remote workforce during uncertain times.   

Assess Your Current Internal Communication Strategy.

Your leadership team will also need to make changes in how they perform their day-to-day tasks. During a situation like this, leadership teams may need to communicate with each other, their direct reports and all employees more frequently. This can be done through company-wide emails, conference calls, newsletters or other forms of mass communication. Whatever the platform is for this communication, making sure that employees do not feel like they are in the dark or at risk is key. Leaders should also be aware that this type of sudden change will often times not go smoothly. Some employees will require different accommodations than others, such as technical assistance or special schedules. Working with your employees to develop a work from home plan that actually works for them will reduce disruptions in your business operations.  

Identify Key Metrics to Track for Success.

Leadership teams are already reviewing and updating crisis plans that address an employee, a member of the leadership team or their family members testing positive for COVID-19. This will require increased communication between members of the leadership team and key stakeholders. Ideally, the C-Suite has already reviewed and put in place business continuity plans should an executive fall ill and will be planning messaging for both internal and external stakeholders. Financial impact is no less a consideration during a pandemic than protecting a company’s most important asset – their employees.

In order to ensure success, the leadership team as well as employees will need unfettered access to the tools they use daily in an office setting, including access to all internal databases, customer delivery systems and Human Resources tracking programs. It may be necessary initially to check performance by a group or single employee on a more frequent basis to be able to assess issues before they become ongoing problems. Regular utilisation and performance check-ins must be maintained, and frequent customer and stakeholder check-ins will help measure productivity and ensure success.

There is still much we do not know about the extent of the spread of COVID-19, both in numbers and in timeline. The best practice any businesses’ leadership team can take is to ensure constant and clear communication from the top-down, create contingencies for identified risks and focus on maintaining as normal day-to-day as possible given the fluidity of this situation.

If you'd like to sign up for our weekly COVID-19 updates, click here.

Barbara Laidlaw brings 25 years of experience developing and running programmes that help companies prepare, protect, and defend their brand reputation through global and national events, recalls, litigation, data breaches, regulatory issues and labour disputes

And marketing departments are not immune to this problem. In fact, our latest piece of research found one of the largest obstacles for marketing departments to become more data-driven was the lack of in-house talent with the correct skill set. But with marketing teams’ spending on data and analytics topping the list of investment priorities, according to the Gartner CMO Spend Survey 2019-2020, how can these departments be sure they have the right people in place to actually use this technology to its full potential? Companies must match any investment in technology and data tools with people who have the necessary skills to get the most value from it.

Since marketers often traditionally do not come from a data science background, this can be tricky. But a combination of in-house training and external support can set them on the path to success.

Training the entire team

When investing in any data analytics tool, thorough and ongoing training on its capabilities is imperative. But using and understanding the role of data cannot be left up to one single individual: the entire team must train to get up to speed on the tools the organisation has invested in. The power of data analytics shines through in collaboration. Everyone needs to have at least a basic level of data literacy so they can understand the data they encounter day to day and how it ladders up to the bigger story.

If budget is an issue, one way around it is to identify an individual who is truly enthusiastic about data, effectively an evangelist, who can lead and educate the rest of the team. They can act as the point of call for any questions or difficulties their peers may encounter when getting to grips with new tools. Of course, it is important to reward this person for their contribution, whether that be financially or through company-wide recognition.

That said, companies cannot neglect the soft skills. Setting aside time to educate creatives on the data being collected and what it means will pay dividends when they need to interpret the data to come up with first-rate campaigns driven by insight rather than gut feel.

Attracting the right talent

When seeking the right skills from outside the organisation, many companies fail to hire the right talent because they don’t have a comprehensive understanding of the mix of technical skills and data expertise they need. As a result, they do not use analytics professionals and data scientists to their full potential, wasting their time on activities they are overqualified for.

To avoid this problem, companies need to take more effort when hiring new employees and give additional thought to exactly what skills the role requires. This step is critical and should not be rushed. A company needs to be clear about where and how it can benefit from analytics professionals and data scientists and then be explicit about how it defines success with potential candidates. The first step is to include required data skills in every job description. Secondly, during the interview process, they must thoroughly question candidates about their ability to use data directly linked to the company’s data objectives. This way, every new hire will serve to help cultivate a cohort of data experts, whose knowledge can percolate throughout the organisation and help boost their peers’ skills.  

Leverage your partners

Unfortunately, it can take hefty investment in training new talent and acquiring tools to make any impact on improving data and analytics utilisation. When in a pinch, seeking a third party with the right experience can act as a quick and easy source of expertise to get your data analytics function off the ground. Laying the foundations for great insight and analytics is something our dedicated research and measurement teams do day in, day out.

Ultimately, unused data is a valuable untapped resource that organisations cannot fail to take advantage of. Yet without the right individuals in their midst to make sense of this information, businesses are at risk of pouring money down the drain when investing in cutting-edge data analytics technology. As the volume of data worth analysing multiplies every day, companies simply don’t have time to sit back and wait for a solution. Technology must work hand in hand with talent to ensure the best return on investment, whether it be in-house or through great agency-client collaboration.

To understand other ways your marketing team can get the most value from their data, check out our Turning Data into Marketing Gold research report or drop us an email at DataDetectives@allisonpr.com.

Lizzy Chesters is an Account Director in Allison+Partners' London Office. 

 How do you grow a business in Europe?  

Jill Coomber, Managing Director of Integrated Marketing, Europe   

The key to great growth rests on data and insights. Really understanding the market, the key trends, the hotspots, where the ‘white space’ exists for your offer and insights into your specific audiences and their behaviours are all vital. You can ultimately see how much of a product or service you can sell into a particular geography, at what price point and with what messaging to which variation of your audience. Being able to focus and prioritise driven by this data and insight means you can scale rapidly, and drive ROI more efficiently.  

 Plan to scale as rapidly as you can build your team and infrastructure. Team experience is a vital component here. You can either recruit the talent who can bring this knowledge or hire agencies with the right skill sets.  

 Understand the power of local language. Working in a single language is often easy whilst focusing on the early adopter and innovator audiences but you reach a ceiling where language is a blocker. Translations and bringing in true localisation into play is an art rather than pure science. Again, experience plays a big part in getting this right: being able to regionalise and localise in an optimum way. Given so many products are in fact experiences nowadays getting omnichannel customer service in local language to resonate is also critical to growth.  

 How do you stay on top of the trends in Europe?  

Heike Schubert, General Manager, Germany 

My day starts with reading two newspapers every morning, I try my best to always have my eyes and ears open to daily news from politics to culture and sport. Don’t only live in your bubble, everything can spark innovation and ideas – stay curious and don’t just stick to communications or marketing news. I listen out for conversation everywhere, from the grocery store to new podcasts so I can get a rounded understanding of everything from what is driving our economy to what gets people talking.  

 In Europe, you have to be aware of cultural backgrounds and societal norms. Self-awareness is key to help you and your business interact with stakeholders in other markets. Take steps to identify your own patterns and understanding while building up your knowledge of other cultural backgrounds. What can seem like small differences in phrasing, meanings and expectations can cause unnecessary damage and confusion. It’s not always about changing how you do things, but it is always about understanding the actual needs and desires of the opposite party. In international communications a key misunderstanding is that you have to adapt or assimilate, but that’s not what helps you in business, it’s about being transparent, authentic without prejudice or judgement of the other party.   

How do you start to build up a network for recruitment and new business in Europe?  

Jim Selman, Partner, Managing Director, UK + Ireland 

My biggest piece of advice is don’t try to switch on talent at short notice but build up a network of entrepreneurial people over time. Investing in your network and building trust in partners and talent allows you to have a surgical understanding of their capabilities, allowing you to work effectively in the region.   

Focus on building trust and camaraderie, and as much as possible be there face to face to get to know their struggles and ambitions. Make sure your connections feel like friends and colleagues even if they aren’t directly part of your organisation, as this will ensure that when things heat up, your extended team will have your back.  

I always remember the Scout Motto: Be Prepared. Even if you don’t need/cannot afford to invest in a particular skill set or service now, be prepared and build up a swiss army knife of options for when the need arises.  

How important is it to stay connected to your brand values as you expand into new territories?  

Cathy Planchard, Global President of Integrated Marketing 

 The value that we place on our company's core values is what differentiates us from other large and mid-sized agencies. These values stand the test of time and drive our approach to the business, the brands we align with, who we hire and how we think. It creates the guardrails for a healthy, productive and satisfying employer-employee relationship.    

 Keeping culture first is a high priority, but it is no easy feat. It requires a mindset and a commitment by hiring managers and leadership of all levels.  We’ve joked that we have a ‘no jerk’ policy, but we mean it. It can be so easy to look at someone's experience or background and want to make a hire, but if their perspective of how they do the work, how they treat their team, and how they approach client service is not aligned with our organisation’s values, it will cause more long-term harm than good.    

  Every market has a unique perspective and backdrop. As an example, the media landscape is incredibly different in Europe than it is in the US, which impacts how we think about the available channels of communication. But the tenets of what makes for a great story are universal: emotional and rationale resonance and empathy for the audience.  

 Be prepared!   

Every European market has its own nuances, behaviours and preferences. Every business is different, but one thing is clear: careful preparation is key. Investing in research and insights, quality localisation, strategic talent and impactful storytelling will set you up for scalable success. 

Jess Docherty is a senior digital account manager in Allison+Partners’ London office.

Marketing Week

Anyone working in the field of marketing and communications is already no doubt aware of Marketing Week. But do you tune in to its regular podcast? Each week, Marketing Week’s award-winning editorial team discuss key topics and are joined by some of the most interesting guests across the industry.

Listen on Google Podcasts.

Marketing Over Coffee

Get your weekly fix of marketing news and analysis from marketing experts John Wall and Christopher Penn. At 20 minutes in length, it’s the perfect podcast for learning something new while drinking your morning cup of joe.

Listen on Google Podcasts.

Internet Marketing Podcast

Looking to get the most from your digital and search engine marketing? Listen to the UK’s most popular internet marketing podcast as their hosts share insider tips and practical advice you can bring to your campaigns.

Listen on Google Podcasts.

The GaryVee Audio Experience

Hosted by Vayner Media CEO and public speaker Gary Vaynerchuk, this podcast includes interviews, discussions, keynote experiences and fireside chats. If you want the more personal touch with a mix of advice for entrepreneurs, this is the podcast for you.

Listen on Google Podcasts.

Duct Tape Marketing

One from across The Pond, Duct Tape Marketing is hosted by U.S. small business marketing expert John Jantsch. With interviews from authors, experts and thought leaders, this is a great place to start for smaller businesses kicking off their marketing strategies in 2020.

Listen on Google Podcasts.

The Stream UK

Get all the latest news and analysis from Allison+Partners in London with The Stream UK. We might be biased, but we think this is the best podcast on this list and a must listen in 2020. Not tuned in yet? You can catch up on all Season One below!

Andrew Rogers is an account director in Allison+Partners’ London office.

Push the Podcast

We already see clients recognise the value of podcasts, with some taking the decision to record their own. And with around 7.1 million people in the UK now listening to podcasts each week, according to Ofcom figures, it’s unsurprising that brands want to take advantage of this popular channel.

Google has also recognised this trend. It has already started making podcasts easier to find on the search platform. The company will now surface individual podcast episodes in search results. So, if someone searches for a show about a particular subject, Google will show them potential podcast episodes that match their enquiry. This will only help fuel the popularity of podcasts as a marketing channel next year.

Video on a Wider Scale

In 2020, more organisations will incorporate video into their communication of news announcements. On the mainstream news websites, there is often video content at the top of the page, where the article sits underneath it. We know images have been important for a while. But until now, video has been somewhat neglected. However, the internet is the second most popular platform for news consumption, according to Ofcom, with 66% of UK adults saying they used it for news in 2019. So, it makes sense that businesses will create their own videos to complement their own news stories.

Influencers Get Corporate

Influencers have become an integral part of most consumer campaigns. But in 2020, we will likely see the use of influencers in the B2B space become far more prevalent. B2B influencers are useful for communicating messages on a more personal level and are particularly effective as part of LinkedIn campaigns to help amplify a brand’s messaging and content. They can also be used for endorsing research, attending company events, inviting company spokespeople to be a guest on their podcast, writing blogs for the corporate website or publishing an article for an outlet they regularly write for.

Advance Employee Advocacy

The idea of social purpose and communicating what brands care about has never been more important. In 2020, we will see more of a focus on how brands can use their employees to push that goal. Trust has become more of an issue for employees too. However, problems with company culture now get exposed by news outlets and on social media (take the recent Google protests as an example). To mitigate against staff expressing detrimental opinions on their social channels, brands need to plan to mitigate that through greater employee advocacy.

The Problem of Private Social Platforms

In 2019, brands realised the likes of Facebook, LinkedIn and Twitter are not the be-all and end-all of social media platforms. Young people spend less time publicly broadcasting their lives online and have moved to channels such as WhatsApp group chat to share experiences of a product or brand in smaller private spaces. The challenge: how can marketers measure this? To combat the problem, marketers will need to be smart about the KPIs they want to measure at the outset of a campaign.

Becoming Data-Driven

More data than ever before will be created in 2020. But what is the point in having all this information if it cannot be used effectively? Over the next 12 months, we will see a more concerted effort by marketers to harness the power of data and greater investment in data analytics tools. Fortunately, new research from Allison+Partners - Turing Data into Marketing Gold - found 81% already invest in augmented or advanced analytics. This is in line with global trends. According to the Gartner CMO Spend Survey 2019-2020, data and analytics tops the priority list of investments for the future.

Coming up on the agenda are the Olympics in Japan, presidential elections, the next season of Love Island and more. And these key events are likely to play a key role in campaign planning. As we move through 2020, it will be fascinating to see if any of the aforementioned trends materialise or if any unexpected technologies or industry upsets emerge.


Lizzy Chesters is an account director in Allison+Partners' London office.

Select brands with the right values

More than any other generation, Gen Z deeply care about the values that brands have. It’s not just enough to have the best product, it’s now vital to also have values that people want to be associated with. This extends to the online space, where brands that fall down can expect (perhaps rightly) to be called out on social media.

For parents (and brands) getting the right gift also means picking the right company behind the brand. It used to be that you just needed to select the brand that was cool. Now you also need to pick the brand that’s woke.

Don’t forget about the environment

Gen Z are increasingly dreaming of a Green Christmas. While other generations might see Christmas as a chance to splurge and over-indulge, younger generations believe that environmental responsibility needs to extend to every day of the year.

Brands should, therefore, avoid anything this Christmas that comes across as needlessly wasteful or unsustainable. Plastic toys in Christmas crackers are increasingly becoming a thing of the past. It’s about time.

Ownership is less important

It’s been true for a while that younger audiences value experiences over physical items. This is even truer when viewed through the frame of sustainability. Many younger shoppers don’t want throwaway presents and would rather opt for digital products, such as music subscriptions or video games. Similarly, experiences (particularly highly shareable ones) will continue to be a hot trend for Christmas shopping.

Brands still matter though

That all being said, most teenagers will still be putting specific brands on their Christmas lists. Having the ‘right’ brand is still a status symbol, particularly in a world where people feel the need to always share. Take for example the VSCO Girl craze. Named after the popular video editing app, the trend requires very specific brands. Fjällräven backpacks, anyone?

Parents and brands alike need to understand Gen Z if they want to get it right this Christmas. Either that or stick to the socks. You can never go wrong with socks.

Andrew Rogers is an account director in Allison+Partners’ London office.

IKEA

The Piercing Insight

When it comes to hosting over the festive season, we all have those little voices in the back of our heads that tell us our homes aren’t presentable enough. From the chipped mug, the crack in the wall to the living room without any personality, we all fear our homes are just not up to scratch.

The Brand Connection

IKEA believes every home is worthy of a festive gettogether, with a little imagination and some clever IKEA products. The Swedish furniture monolith has also tapped into a bigger cultural trend by using grime legend, MC D Double E.

The Succinct Expression

The Wonderful Everyday.


MCDONALD'S

The Piercing Insight

Kids all over the world leave snacks out for Santa and his reindeer on Christmas Eve.

The Brand Connection

McDonald’s celebrates the magic of Christmas through the eyes of Ellie, an imaginative little girl, in an advert which illustrates scenes recognised by parents across the country. The fast-food giant also garners lots of PR with the promise of giving out free ‘Reindeer Treats’ to families on Christmas Eve.

The Succinct Expression

McDonald's is back with its 'Reindeer Ready' message – which gives it strong message penetration and allows the marketing team to spend more on the production and execution. Win win!

M&S FOOD



The Piercing Insight

M&S Food provides its customers award-winning quality and innovative food.

The Brand Connection

The delicious M&S Christmas range of food and colleagues are the stars of the show. The Christmas marketing campaign also drives earned media by including M&S Food celebrity panel members Paddy McGuiness and Emma Willis. The duo wanders through a festive market with more than 100 M&S customers and a real school choir from Wales that sings a rework of Fleetwood Mac’s Albatross, the iconic tune behind M&S' 'this is not just any' campaign. Now, where’s my nearest M&S Foodhall?

Succinct Expression

This is not just food; this is M&S Christmas food!

The winning formula for cultivating the ‘Big Idea’ sounds good, but sometimes the light bulb just doesn’t go off. Great ideas are usually the result of a combination of conversations, research, experience – and time. Allison+Partners has designed a ‘Big Ideas Lab’ to help brands connect with culture and creativity that sits in and outside of their organisations. For more information, get in touch with Jill Coomber at LondonOffice@allisonpr.com.

Gina Mossey is an account director in Allison+Partners' London office.

Make sure the story is one shared company-wide

Those who will turn out to be the real drivers of your brand purpose are your exec team and your employees. Good causes are emotive. So, the more you can get a sense of the values your entire company strongly believes in, the more heart your narrative will have.

Surveys and focus groups can work wonders here. Including members of the C-suite at key points in the planning phase will mean they are several steps ahead and truly bought into the cause when it hits the airwaves across PESO channels. Workshops work really well in the early stages of bringing stakeholders together to tackle collaborative message development and creative campaign ideation.

All of this will ultimately give an engaging and consistent narrative that will spark connections with customers and make them want to adopt and share it as their own.

Answer the “why”

This question is more important than ever to answer in the early planning stages. Ask yourself why your brand supports this cause. Does it align with your brand mission and values? Not only that, but does it fit with the vision of your leadership team? Is there real potential for your company to make a difference? Do you have the resources to put behind this to make a measurable impact?

If the answer to any of these is “no”, more needs to be put in place to be able to truly drive the initiative forward. Taking a step back to ask yourselves the difficult questions here is invaluable. Don’t be afraid to take inspiration from those who do it well or speak to contacts in other markets to get an outsider’s perspective.

Think earned-first

As an integrated agency with its DNA in earned, we practice what we preach by bringing in the earned media specialists when working with brand purpose. The story needs to be genuine and evocative for the customer, skills that PR professionals have honed for years by working with journalists to build stories that capture imaginations. If a story is powerful enough to captivate your earned media, it’ll be one that flies when it comes to driving action across paid, shared and owned channels.

Think long term

Brands that have great purpose are those that are in it for the long haul. Once you’ve taken the time to find your “white space” – where your company can really make a difference – take the time to think about active, measurable commitments you can make. With so many brands storytelling around purpose, customers are sceptical of “window dressing”. They want something tangible to prove your cause is something you care about and are committed to doing right. Shoot for a long-term initiative or partnership that can evolve over time over one-off charity gigs.

If this year’s awards season is anything to go by, stories around brand purpose are here to stay. Driving real change is a marathon, not a sprint. We can’t wait to see what both market leaders and startups alike manage to achieve in the next 12 months. To hear more musings, predictions, and trends around storytelling and purpose, check out this month’s edition of The Stream podcast here: http://bit.ly/2MOgkUm.

Gina Mossey is an account director in Allison+Partners’ London office.