Public relations is the art of pivoting, and the pandemic sure had us zigzagging.
MCG had to continue finding ways to serve our clients even when traditional methods were unworkable. Here’s what we were up against and how we decided to move around the obstacles.
Virtual Press Conferences
In-person press conferences were not an option, but our clients still had timely and newsworthy information to share. For example, it was crucial for both the Connecticut Department of Health and the Jackson Laboratory (deeply involved with COVID testing) to communicate to the public.
Facilitating forums on Zoom and then summarizing the key information in blog posts became a favored approach for us. We had to keep forums well-structured and be diligent about properly informing the media and stakeholders on what to expect from the events.
Following a forum, a concise summary of the highlights was valuable to those who couldn’t attend. The content also acted as media we could share on our owned channels.
No Face-to-Face Meetings with Stakeholders
With organizations shutting down all in-person meetings, we had to find other ways to get in front of stakeholders. To help reach influential people, we created digital, multimedia explainer packages for them on our clients’ key issues.
The media packages were a blend of cogently written content and short videos. We strove to provide enough information for someone to understand the issue but not so much that they were overloaded.
PR Post-Pandemic
As the world and the PR industry begin to morph back to normalcy, we’re eager to get back to the basics. We will continue to incorporate some of the techniques and methods used during the pandemic and add them to the PR toolbox.