What has the pandemic taught PR specialists and marketers?

2020 was that year when people said, “I don’t believe this is happening to me.” The pains took place both individual (as wrote Lev Tolstoy “everyone is unhappy in their own way”), and at the same time general — isolation, unemployment, the closing of businesses, depression. The world has changed and continues to change. What happened to PR communications?

Every year the role of communications — both commercial, public, and governmental — is growing. For this reason, the number of specialists in the field of marketing, advertising, and PR is also increasing.

Owners of small businesses are actively interested in trends, so they study the postulates of promotion in theory, and make experiments in practice. Specialists who were laid off in 2020, started taking accelerated courses and obtaining additional qualifications in SMM, copywriting, graphic design, etc.

Possibly, in some time, the audience will rush to conquer other professions, which will be dictated by time and changes in society. In the meantime, informational technologies, communications management, and marketing as a sales engine, are still at the helm. Therefore, let’s take a look at what the Covid pandemic in 2020 taught PR specialists, and what approaches we adopted for the coming year of 2021.

COMPROMISE BETWEEN “PERFECTLY” AND “IN TIME”.

Perhaps this is one of the fundamental insights that can influence the approach of work, change the priorities of actions, update to-do plans and, in general, affect the psychological well-being by putting an internal perfectionist to a deserved retirement.

2020 became the year of accelerated testing of hypotheses, fantastic flexibility, and spinning into masses the newly created formats, that only yesterday seemed like some idiotic experiments “made in a garage”.

Only months later, the world will see a “secret” of companies and professionals who survived. They didn`t sit for half a year to improve their theories, but with a half-empty plan went out into the real world. And, surprisingly, the empty squares of the plan were feeling much faster under the guidance of Its Majesty Reality.

Those who went much later to the audience, which had been changed during the pandemic period, could not understand — why a perfectly verified plan fails. So many companies and managers had to leave the market, give up, or re-do everything from scratch.

PR MANAGER AS A BUSINESS MANAGER.

Now a PR specialist is a business development manager. With the skills that are now required for a PR specialist, you can independently start opening and running a business.

If earlier companies could test PR hypotheses, recruit beginners, spend time on training with a company`s resources, so now everyone is looking for clear KPIs and results, often long-term ones. And if the company doesn`t develop itself as a business with a PR specialist, if public structures don`t receive grants with a PR specialist and don`t attract new beneficiaries, so such a PR specialist will not be hired, with high probability.

Multi-instrumentalism in specialists sounded with a renewed vigor. At one time, Ukrainian companies adopted the experience of a narrow segmentation of specialists in their field of specialization, eg. on a subject of writing texts, on working with certain tools, or a certain audience. And yes, it was unethical to get into someone else’s field with your help or own recommendations.

During the period of quality of the human resources, but not their quantity, companies again look for multi-instrumentalists who are able and ready to do, if not everything, at least a lot; who are ready to help various departments (SMM, email, design, UX / UI, editorial staff, etc.) and who have the expertise, even small one, in the multi-channel promotion.

PR and marketing are in the midst of limited budgets and other resources. This trend will also continue this year because the page with covid-19 cannot be called closed. All projects and the smallest steps of companies prioritize the payback of everything (including marketing and PR investments). Therefore, budgets have been cut. In an unpredictable market, PR specialists and marketers are forced to strive for more flexibility and, at the same time, focus on the results that can be calculated in numbers.

We used to say “how much is the price?”, now we say “how much is the value?”. We become “business sectarians”, “priests of the result.”

AN UNPROFESSIONAL TEXT WRITTEN BY A PROFESSIONAL IS BETTER THAN A PROFESSIONALLY WRITTEN TEXT BY A NONPROFESSIONAL.

The amount of content is growing, and its quality is deteriorating. As a result, internet users become travelers in a desert looking for drops of water. It's not surprising that the audience is much more ready to forgive unrefined literary skill and blots in style and punctuation, but to feel that texts were written by professionals in their own— builders, doctors, teachers, cookers, artists.

Content is king only when it`s efficient. All these verbal laces and “water” without a valuable semantic load, the complexity of perception, a lack of unique selling offers are signs of poor copywriting. But even professional marketer-copywriters, which have dived into the topic that they should “sell”, are not always able to convince the target audience of their professionalism and cause credibility. Readers feel some intermediation in the texts and a “smell of a stranger”.

What`s the conclusion? If you are a professional in your field, if you have unique insights, exclusive experience, and remarkable life situations — write texts yourself — on social networks, in blogs, in online and printed media, fill the landing page of your business yourself as well. Then you can just give your texts for easy editing or proofreading to upgrade them, or to cooperate with a copywriter who is like a fish in water on your topic.

A SPECIALIST IS AN ATTITUDE TO WORK.

Loyalty and clients-orientation end where the money ends. — and this was shown by the pandemic.

Despite the fact that conscientiousness used to be the foundation to survival rather than a competitive advantage, the level of customer service suffered a decline. Attitudes to work have also changed, as companies have cut salaries that only lower-skilled workers have agreed to.

A vicious circle: you need money for high-quality customer service — there is no money so we don`t hire the customer-oriented personnel — customers are unhappy and don’t bring us money.

- Dad, what are we going to eat today?

- Nothing, I work in a fast-growing, interesting, and friendly company.

Money is the strongest and essential motivation. But if good specialists with strong hard skills ask for 3–5 times more than the existing budget of a company, then what should we do? Right — to recruit people by their soft skills. Honest and responsive ones, actively involved in the process, who are ready to answer working calls overtime. This is how the quote “A specialist is about attitude to work and to clients” appeared.

In pandemic conditions, employers are ready to pay for the profession called “a good person” who will attract clients.

And this approach has worked, the gears have spun. Business- and social influencers with several posts on the network have launched a flash mob of gratitude, or rather, charity, towards business in the face of the covid-19 pandemic. They invoked ordinary internet users to order the delivery of groceries more often, to give tips to couriers, and when buying 1 cappuccino, pay for 10 ones. A shout “Business, live!” was heard and supported by thousands (at least comments). The reason for such activity is that everyone could feel like a hero saving the sinking, like a Titanic, economy. The need to prove one’s own social attractiveness also played a role.

MORE TRANSPARENCY ABOUT MENTAL HEALTH.

First revelations have already shaken up the media space.

Isolation, which was (and partially remains) a tough government measure or a personal choice of a particular company, was very difficult for many people.

But in most cases, the audience wrote praises to the quarantine, in media and on social networks. Thanks-letters for last time:

- finally, I stay alone with myself and my thoughts;

- I can take a break from colleagues and friends;

- now I devote more time to my family, relatives, loved ones, children;

- it’s the perfect time for me to learn how to use video broadcasting and hold online meetups because I’ve procrastinated for a long time, and now the whole world is in “zoom”;

- have been cut at work? So do I need to worry? Finally, I will rest, and, by the way, I always wanted to be an actress in Hollywood. So I suppose this is my hot time to move towards my dream;

- I found a lot of time for reading books, crocheting and playing sports.

Sounds a bit of a stretch, doesn’t it?

However, despite such a large amount of informational conceptual silicone that flooded the internet, which made it itching like from allergy to a product of unknown origin, for many months a considerable part of the audience was silent, swallowing their own honest thoughts and emotions. Why? — they simply did not belong to that dense conceptual cluster that “the quarantine is good.” “Why does everyone feel good in isolation, but I feel so bad? Why does everyone find so many advantages, and in my case, it just ruins my life? Probably, I’m some kind of “not a correct” person. I’m an idiot who cannot just enjoy my life in crisis”.

Meanwhile, the space of traditional and digital advertising was shouting with creative slogans like these:

- Well, finally, you can do absolutely all purchases online without getting up from your sofa!

- All your purchases have become much more hygienic! You don’t have to try on a thing that hundreds of people have already tried on before you. Great, isn’t it? We love it too!

- It is so great to spend 24 hours per day with your children, see how their lessons are going and do homework together.

- Have you always dreamed of not standing in hospital lines? Hurray, a happy future is already here! Just register on our website, confirm the SMS, fill out the form, click on this online chat, start the chatbot or download this application, and ask a doctor online!

The spiral of silence is not a historical rudiment, and it can descend from the gray pages of boring textbooks at any moment.

This is what the covid pandemic showed us. But someone first woke up with the thought “Stop. That`s wrong. I want my clients to know and feel — I don’t pretend to understand them. I do accept their reality.”

A big step in the situation was made because of the fact that several European and USA directors of large companies unexpectedly made their resignations publically due to their depression and other psychological disorders caused by the situation with the pandemic and quarantine. Several of the world’s largest media wrote about this, and many people finally felt that they were not alone with their difficulties. Finally, people have been given the freedom to feel and speak frankly about what the pandemic situation means to their lives.

Brands have also become a little bit more attentive, reducing the attitude to communicate with all of their audience representatives with the same tone of voice, target phrases, sales triggers and offers. It is much more profitable to listen to the true values ​​of your customers. How to do it? Ask in social networks and offline, give bonuses for honest answers and select an individual approach.

Nevertheless, the pandemic taught PR specialists a lot, transformed their approaches, forced them to reevaluate the methods and tools of work, act faster and test theories in practice, believe in their strength to step into the unknown every time and cope, even stumbling.