Welcome to the days of our lives, with enough drama to fill a season of your favourite soap opera and where it seems that nothing is off limits. In Canberra, our last 6 months have rolled from drought to bushfires with choking smoke, hail the size of golf balls and now COVID-19. Combine this with an economic environment that has gone from bad to worse, it almost feels a bit hollow to talk marketing.
But we need to. We need to keep talking. We need to keep communicating with each other. We need to stay connected to our customers and we need to dig deep and find that inspiration of why we started our business or joined our organisation and what we love about it.
We just need to do it amidst a massive period of change. Our business at Threesides has to change simply because yours is as well.
Lately we have spent more time on crisis communications than customer journey mapping, and shot more video about how our clients are changing their business models to survive, when 6 months ago keeping the doors open wasn’t even a passing thought. We have written letters for CEOs to notify staff of stand downs and redundancies, learnt what is an essential service and sent tens of thousands of emails, social posts and text messages to keep our clients’ customers up to date in real time.
But that’s okay, that’s what we are here for. Marketing that matters, marketing that can make a difference.
We don’t need to be the 127th business this week that has told you we are working from home, sanitising our hands and coughing into our elbows. But let me be one of those businesses that wants to reassure you that as long as you are in business, we will be here with you.
We know that marketing can help us through tough times and the good ones (I should know I started Threesides in the GFC) and I know that change is the new normal.
So, here is the ask, the call to action, the big sell. Please take this opportunity to think about what you and your customers need now, how you are planning to stay connected and what they might need next week and the week after that. Muster the strength to think about the day we get the days of our lives back (COVID-19 extermination day) and what we are going to do to get the doors open. Where people are spending and loving life in contact with each other again.
If you have the opportunity to support, donate or help other businesses in your community survive. Can you do it? Is there some extra stretch in your team, your budget or your staffing right now that can help someone in real need?
I want you to know that we are here to help. We always have been, we always will be and that’s what gets us out of bed every morning. Let’s look after each other, do what we can. And if that’s not enough, let’s find the strength to change, innovate, recover and survive and come out the other side together.
Thanks for hanging in there – we’re in this together.
Todd and Rachel Wright
Directors – Threesides Marketing
