A couple of weeks into the pandemic and we’re still working hard. Marketing ourselves and marketing our clients. We’re also receiving a few enquiries (which if I’m honest, we were not expecting). So far, all of our staff have work to do and have adapted well to remotely collaborating on projects.
That said, we’re not continuing as “normal” and using our usual marketing messages. We tried and we just couldn’t.
A lot of our work is video-centric marketing campaigns. Of course, this includes video, which can be live-action, but also animation and re-editing existing footage.
Along with video production though, we provide social media management and paid ad services to our clients (Google Ads, YouTube, Socials etc). I mention this because a strange thing happens when you start to write or review copy for your upcoming ads or posts in the wake of this outbreak: something doesn’t feel right.
I think to carry on as normal is, at best, ignorant and unresponsive, and at worst, insensitive.
For us, and for our clients, things felt a whole lot better once we addressed the elephant standing on our necks and discussed what this situation meant to us – as a company, as a service, as individuals and also as part of the community.
At Future Proof, we decided to create a big cornerstone piece of content in the form of a vlog where we explained our position and also offered some advice to the business community on marketing during this time.
With our clients, they worked with us on adapting their messaging to either directly address the situation, or even better, actually relate their original message to these new times (which only works if it can be achieved naturally).
We’re not saying discussing it directly will allow you to carry on exactly as before, but it helps to transition into this next phase of marketing.
Finally, this doesn’t mean that moving forward, everything needs to contain the words COVID or corona either – in fact, it will be a breath of fresh air if it didn’t. Instead, continue to think about ‘value’ in your content, and what ‘value’ really looks like now.
