COVID-19 Comms: Corporate Communications Tips For Brands

The tumultuous COVID-19 situation has set off a chain of unprecedented challenges for industries around the world. Naturally, it is a challenging time for brand communications, as PR and communications professionals need to keep a pulse on the rapidly-shifting landscape and concerns. It is also a sensitive time to tread the fine balance of putting forth messaging that resonates with audiences while trying not to appear opportunistic. 

Over the past month, PR Newswire and its parent company Cision have launched a series of webinars that involved informative discussions with industry experts on a broad range of concerns. Topics in the APAC webinars range from crisis communications, brand communications to identifying fake news. 

We highlight tips and best practices from three communications experts from our series of webinars.

Charlene Lee 

Head of Corporate Communications, Tata Consultancy Services 

Go back to the three principles of crisis communications: Keep employees calm, stakeholders confident and news positive. 

Think about how your employees would feel and respond – that’s the rule of thumb of putting out social media content during this period. Once you can gauge their feelings, you have a good basis of the type of content to put out. Acknowledge that this is not going to be a business or numbers-first type of game now as more pressing issues in the world take precedence.

Tap on your social media channels for companies that need to maintain communications despite facing budget cuts. Social media is an owned channel where you can somewhat control the messaging. Instead of advertising, it is time to do thought leadership as people are looking for more content now to understand more about the company. 

Bill Zucker 

Managing Director, Ketchum PR 

Empathy and intelligence matter more than ever: Think less about what can get me attention but how can I reach my most important stakeholders and what tone should I take? A good example is Arne Sorenson, CEO of Marriott International, who put out a video address to his employees that was subsequently reposted on YouTube. He is getting a lot of credit for communicating honestly in the right tone. 

Understand the needs of journalists in order to provide targeted and relevant information that will stand a higher chance of getting reported. More than ever, it is the time for brands to listen and “read the room” by using media monitoring tools and monitoring journalists’ social media feeds. 

A lack of response says something, but the tone of response says even more. Choose carefully how and when you respond to questions from stakeholders during this challenging period. Look out for what people are asking about the company as it is an indication of loopholes in the communications strategy or room for improvement in some areas. 

Jennifer Donahoe

Public Relations & Social Media Account Director, Planit Advertising 

Stop marketing and start communicating to help your key audiences, who have been affected by the COVID-19 situation. Some good communications initiatives include supermarkets allocating specific times for senior citizens to shop, in order to curb the viral spread, and restaurants offering delivery services. Companies should be focused more on helping the public rather than making profits.

Unschedule all of your social content, and don’t schedule anything in the future because the reality is that this situation is changing hourly, if not more. Something that is appropriate now may not be in three hours, so take it day by day with your content. Show care and concern and be authentic. 

Consider doing a video news package for the media to break through the news clutter if your company has something to announce that can help the public. This is because most media outlets are unable to commute to conduct face-to-face interviews and the current focus of their stretched teams is on coronavirus coverage. With a video news package, the news is assembled for the media to disseminate easily. 

 PR Newswire has an Artificial Intelligence (AI)-Infused Video Creation Service that creates engaging videos from your existing content. Get in touch with us for more information.

Missed the webinars? You can watch them on-demand here, as part of our COVID-19 communications resources page.

This blog post is written by Kenneth Goh, Senior Marketing Executive at PR Newswire. A former journalist, he relishes keeping track of breaking news as much as telling stories with trends and data. Connect with him via Linkedin.