As virtually every country implemented some form of quarantine in response to COVID-19, businesses across industries felt the sharp sting of the effects, with the global economy predicted to lose $8.8 trillion. Faced with a long-term crisis, a media landscape that transformed priorities seemingly overnight and budgets of many businesses frozen, PR pros need to adapt.
The Value Proposition
To build a resilient business, the value proposition canvas must break business strategy into customer, product and value.
Knowing the customer, as well as how your product or service provides value to the target market are the fundamental markers of a strong business. To create a successful business, these elements must always function well together. A constant evaluation of them is essential as a business’s value can increase or decrease as markets evolve.
The value proposition canvas provides a great deal of room for adaptation. If subtle or dramatic shifts to strategy are required, leaders can tap into a wealth of internal talent that allows resources to be refocused on the most important projects during a business pivot.
Internal Communication
However, it is important to be mindful about how change is communicated and to show internal teams how and why these decisions are being made.
Whether it’s a change to company policy to adapt to work-from-home environments, or a full-blown shift in strategy, well-planned internal and external communication is crucial. Business leaders should not underestimate how much employees look to them for information. A calm yet informed company statement can have tremendous power on customer relations.
Companies must ensure they frame the reasons behind immediate changes and plans for the long-term. Will previous objectives hold? Will they be frozen temporarily, or replaced entirely? Ensure everyone understands that careful planning and consideration underpin every decision.
Using the PESTLE Framework
When the time to make a public announcement on difficult decisions comes, the way the messaging is framed has the power to make or break its reception.
This is where the PESTLE framework comes into play. The tool crops up often in risk management, but it can play an extremely valuable role in PR and communication. Its main value is offering an understanding of how the public will receive messages.
PESTLE stands for political, economic, societal, technological, legal and environmental. To use this tool to measure public sentiment, little time and research are required to understand events that are occurring.
Group customer segments into geographical location or industry vertical to ensure that local and specific changes are recorded.
Campaign leaders will still need to rely on their emotional intelligence to work out what to do with this information, but it can uncover important details that help predict how likely a message will resonate. With this data, content angles, company statements and pitches can be tailored appropriately.
How PR Can Adapt
There are many ways that PR can build resilience into business models during the the pandemic.
By looking at the external environment and available resources, PR pros can ascertain what can be done now, in the near future and beyond. Building a decision tree of likely outcomes helps to paint a clearer picture of what changes are the most sensible course of action.
Use Data
Data should always support this process. PR pros can conduct an audit that assesses challenges those they represent are facing, how drastically COVID-19 has affected their business and how likely they are to cancel PR services as a result. This provides a solid foundation on which to base decisions and can even spark ideas and opportunities on ways to support companies and organizations.
In turn, business resources can be reallocated to ensure PR focuses on creating the most value for companies. The urgency of the situation and importance of new deliverables must be made clear to PR team members. Daily meetings, detailed GANTT charts and highly transparent company-wide communication are some of the ways this urgency can be relayed.
What’s Next?
Although the new normal already is being touted as the here and now, things are far from clear. PR must be highly responsive to these changes and adapt to micro and macro trends swiftly. The pandemic has caused people to reevaluate their lives and values. It’s therefore highly likely that priorities for the media will continue to evolve through the course of the year.
PR pros must place greater emphasis on nurturing long-term relationships with journalists and be sensitive to the pressures media members face to emerge from this period with a strong network and a leading part in the new-media landscape.
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