Recession Survival for PR and Marketing
The impact of the recession on communications practitioners is game-changing. I’ve been thinking about that forecast ever since the “Financial Meltdown Mania” panel discussion by the San Francisco chapter of the International Association of Business Communicators (IABC) as 2009 had gotten underway.
Our Bay Area senior communicator colleagues from Double Forte, Goodwill Industries, Cisco, Wells Fargo Advantage Funds and Hart Communications followed a meltdown analysis by Tom Osborne, vice president for alliances at Exeros (“the only thing that remains the same is historical ignorance”).
The overall takeaways:
- Strong companies with a good story to tell have a marketing opportunity to get their messages out.
- Marketing in the crisis is not just about products but thought leadership.
- Status quo is not going to make it.
Useful tips:
- Leverage a niche that can be developed.
- Develop a communications playbook to drive marketing strategy, internally and externally, with a focus on expanding customer relationships while preparing for the economic upturn.
- Maintain transparency, be realistic, empower new communicators among your employees.
- Focus on the value that you can deliver.
- Communicate more — long periods of deafening silence, especially internally, breed fear and mistrust.
- As with any crisis, say what you know – and also what you don’t know.
- Don’t be afraid to break your model and try new things.
