HOW TO MANAGE YOUR COMMUNICATION APPROPRIATELY, EFFECTIVELY AND WITH EMPATHY IN 2020
Marketing and PR Filter Update
2020 is becoming the most turbulent year for business (and everything else) in recent history.
It’s becoming much harder to operate and communicate when there’s a new crisis every few weeks from a global pandemic to a global economic crisis and then to a much needed global human rights movement.
It’s definitely time to do a check-in on how we are communicating.
We realized that our previous marketing and PR filter answered the issues of a time where organizations were either paralyzed or exploiting people due to COVID 19. Things are now very different, which begs us to ask:
“How do we communicate to our audiences in such a turbulent period?”
During the beginning of the Coronavirus pandemic, 78% of consumers indicated that brands should communicate as long as it helped them with their daily lives, and over the past few months we saw communities come together to enable organizations to support others. The successful cases showed that committing to problem solving and partnerships were effective.
Then a further wave of communities moved to support or abandon brands in the wake of the Black Lives Matter protests around the US and the world. Both successful and unsuccessful cases demonstrated actions and values mattered just as much as what you communicated.
Given all the information we have so far, we’ve created a dual filter to run your campaigns and communication ideas before publishing, a Big Picture Filter, and a Little Details Filter. This will be useful for all levels of your organization, Owner, Management, Agency to Intern.
The Big Picture Filter.
This filter asks strategic questions about your Marcoms activities, it’s most useful just after the brainstorming stage and before you get top level approval. It’s recommended to note down all objections to pair with solutions in a Red/Blue Team exercise.
1 - Are you treating people fairly?
What we mean by fair is objectively looking at a situation on its own merits, where it’s not about treating people equally, but fairly.
This is why the All Lives Matter movement was an ill-timed response to the Black Lives Matter protests and uproar. The issue at hand wasn’t about everyone being discriminated and losing their lives, but systematic oppression and murder of black lives at the current time. It’s like telling someone about your bad day when they’ve just lost their dead husband, father or brother, it’s not empathetic
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For your community orientated communications, ask yourself if what you’re saying is truly empathetic, remember it’s not about how you feel in their shoes, it’s about how they feel.
In terms of fairness in business mechanics you can run your campaign or message through these questions:
Is everyone involved in your value chain getting what they deserve?
Are the workers from your suppliers paid enough to put their kids through school?
Are your customer’s problems actually solved by what you’re selling?
Are your true clients and customers on board with it?
Are you saying or doing things which can damage the community and environment for your own profit?
If you’re wondering why a marketer or brander needs to think of these big questions, it’s because it’s your job in communications to advise decision-makers what the public might think. If you care about the organization you work for, then ask, and if they’re the right kind of organization to work for, they’ll listen.
This leads us to our next big filter question:
2 - Who really am I targeting?
In whatever age you want to call this whether it’s ‘call-out culture’, ‘cancel culture’ or social justice warriorism, you must be ready to take criticism across all of your activities.
There’s a small but persistent demographic of people who will happily dig through what you’ve done wrong in the past and blow it out of proportion. You may have done your due diligence already, made sure it was fair and helpful but still found yourself being slandered online. When this happens, our advice is to stay calm, empathize, resolve it transparently, apologize, execute the reparations and move on, you can read more about that in our blog about handling bad PR.
We bring this up because of 2 things:
1) Your activities shouldn’t be targeting everybody, there’s just no way you’ll have a concise message (or a good nights sleep) if you try and please everyone. Objectively ask who you really want as your customers, Tim Ferris nails it on the head, more about that here. And come up with a script to politely tell them, no.
2) Your activities should be sincere and genuine. In this age of spin and fake news, people are much more suspicious of hustlers and are gravitating towards brands and organizations who stand up for what they believe in, and can effectively communicate and act on those values.
3 - Is your house in order?
This doesn’t mean having a full stockroom and a tidy shop, we’re asking if your team(s) are completely on board with what the organization is doing, and that when people ask, all members are able to respond as a unit.
Companies have been facing all kinds of pressure due to internal conflicts regarding how a brand should be operating in its community, from employee walk-outs at Google to Crossfit affiliates disassociating from the brand. Here are some questions to check optics inside the organization:
Have we asked our teams if this is a good idea?
Have we checked with our brand ambassadors who are the face of our brand?
Have we communicated empathetically to them to gain not just commercial but community insights? - This is the foundation for your team to be able to sincerely communicate messages from your group. They have to believe in it first.
Now that we have our big picture insights out of the way, let’s look at the details, here’s 5 questions to ask before you publish anything:
Little Details Filter
Did you kill it?
We’re referring to Sir Arther Quiller-Couch’s quote - where you ‘Murder your darlings’
The idea is that your first draft is never perfect, and thus you must learn to write a different copy of the same content again, and again. This helps to refine your thinking and sharpen your content.
The aim of this question is to get a 100 word message to a 25 word home-run.
Was this tested?
This might sound obvious after reading the Big Picture Filter, but you’ll be surprised at how many PR disasters have come about because campaign material wasn’t tested first.
Did you sample the content with your intended audience before publishing?
Are you being helpful?
Is your audience getting meaningful information from your material or is it a clear grab for traffic?
Is this helpful for the community? Unless you have a cult like following, most people are not interested in making you rich. They expect to have their needs met when they send money and attention your way.
Does your content resonate with your audience psychographics?
Does your audience need to see a face on the artwork to give it credibility?
Does the kind of content you’re publishing need a face to give it credibility? (see what I did there)
What actions do we need to take to show our approach is sincere to them?
What keywords are associated with their values to use in your write-up?
Did you partner up with someone?
Digital ads have suddenly gotten a bit more expensive, one of the best ways to tap into new target audiences is through sharing your customer base.
Remember to add value to the spirit of a partnership in all communications, this way your customers can feel inspired by your partnership and not just roll their eyes at another 10% discount for the partner’s members.
The obvious questions:
Did you size everything correctly?
Proof the spelling?
Contact details?
Did you adjust the content per platform?
Is everyone ready once the first customer comes in to buy?
We hope this filter is useful for your brainstorming sessions, briefs and basically every stage of content creation up to the point you click send.
As mentioned before, it is an excellent time for brands and organizations big and small to exhibit leadership qualities. Unwavering values and vision, communicated with empathy and acted compassionately are exactly the kinds of messages and actions audiences need right now.
We know you can do it, good luck!