Pandemic Leads Communicators to Adjust Messages and Delivery Modes

While the pandemic battle continues, communication remains one of the most essential functions at businesses around the world. Whether it’s dealing with customer messaging or relaying information to employees, communication matters, perhaps more during the pandemic. We found communicators at brands, nonprofits and agencies making subtle and significant changes to messaging during this critical moment.

Connecting with Audiences

For many companies, the pandemic turned traditional messaging on its head. For others, it provided an opportunity to lean more heavily into serving audience members, distributing a message of care and help.

At Headspace, a meditation app with more than 65 million users in 190 countries, the mental challenges of COVID-19 opened a door for communicators to support audience members. Angelica Kelly, senior communications manager, says whether the company communicates internally or to customers, it wants people to be “kind to their minds.”

“Externally, we want to be sensitive to the fact that everyone has different needs at the moment and is coping in different ways. We...want to step in where we can be helpful,” she says.

Headspace launched free programs to help bring relief to those suffering during the pandemic. It’s offering a free year to those unemployed or furloughed in the U.S. and U.K., free access to healthcare workers in the U.S., U.K. and France, as well as teachers in the U.S., U.K., Canada and Australia.

Companies can find free Headspace for Work tools and resources to help employees. For everyone else, there's "Weather the Storm," a collection of meditation and mindfulness crisis content.

In addition to raising awareness about its free programming, Headspace took a harder stance on creating messaging around a commitment to science.

“In times of uncertainty, it’s important to have a foundation based on evidence,” Kelly says. Headspace messages have included content from an in-house science team. "This has been an incredibly important part of building trust with our audiences,” she adds.

Using Digital to Serve Members

Internal communication does not always mean distributing information to employees—although that’s been one of the main priorities for communicators during COVID-19. While PR pros at The Internet & Television Association (NCTA) have worked to ensure leadership is transparent about return-to-office plans with its 90 employees at the trade association's Washington, D.C., headquarters, near Capitol Hill, they also have prioritized messaging for another internal audience: the association's members.

“We’ve redoubled our effort to communicate with member companies...about the scenario playing out at the federal level,” says Rob Stoddard, SVP, industry & association affairs.

“This includes substantial information about how...coronavirus relief packages are affecting our business, what we as an industry can, and should do, to address calls for equality and social justice reform, and how companies can step up in all these areas to serve the national interest.”

One effort has allowed NCTA to utilize more digital channels for distribution of information. The tool is an interactive U.S. map (available at ncta.com).

Accessible to member companies and the general public, it offers data by state about the resilience of broadband networks. Stoddard says data is updated regularly.

“People tell us they love tracking the volume of traffic our cable infrastructure has carried during the pandemic,” Stoddard says. “They’ve also enjoyed reviewing the effectiveness of the network in their state, in supporting the huge work-at-home surge in demand, which has increased more than 35 percent at times.”

Sometimes, all it takes is a crisis to accelerate innovation, including digital and advocacy efforts. Fortunately, the experience acquired during the pandemic will pay off well into the future for NCTA and its members.

The Rise of Internal Communications

Every company, no matter its size, is experiencing a barrage of questions and concerns from employees. Aidan M. Ryan, strategic communications advisor at Goldberg Segalla LLP, says much of the heavy lifting is falling to internal communicators.

“We're seeing a necessary pivot toward internal communications, and that is a response to the challenges of maintaining productivity and morale, not only in a remote business environment, but in a social and political environment that has strained to a breaking point,” he says.

Ryan says he’s worked with multiple companies on crafting messages around sudden closings and re-openings, layoffs and responses to the Black Lives Matter protests.

“While it’s critical to communicate internally about operational concerns and workplace-safety issues, companies should focus on giving their people a sense of shared purpose, a signal that management is open to hearing questions and concerns, and a vision for the future,” he says.

Global Partnerships

Often, the first thing cut when things get tight is communication and marketing. Instead, some brands are solidifying in-house teams to help shoulder the financial burden and retain staff.

When Neil Ripley, head of corporate communications, arrived at Comscore last summer, he began rebuilding the corporate communication function, shifting to put an emphasis on an internal team.

“There’s no getting around it: every dollar counts in this economy,” Ripley says. “The pandemic accelerated our transition, and we’re now exclusively in-house. Looking into next year, I’ll probably rely on trusted freelancers for strategy and content support rather than seek an AOR relationship.”

But for some brands, partnering with agencies provides a necessary cost-benefit.

For OkCupid, a brand with users in more than 110 countries, it needs to lean on these partners for help to expand in select overseas markets.

“As part of those efforts, we work with multiple integrated communication agencies across markets and have continued our partnerships with these firms,” says Michael Kaye, OkCupid's global communications & PR manager.

And while traditional dating may have changed with the pandemic's need for social distancing, there’s still no shortage of people looking for love. Kaye says the company is bucking the downsizing trend.

“We are actually continuing to grow at OkCupid, and are currently hiring for multiple roles, including several engineers, to better serve our global user base,” he says.

CONTACT: [email protected]