How To Weather The Whiplash
Summary lead. || Photo Credit.
I’ve been a part of the RED VELVET team for almost two years and have, in my time, loved writing posts for our team and industry. I love this part of my job, and for the most part, the posts write themselves.
I’m confounded though. And I’ve come back to this post several times in the last week and each time I’ve returned to the keyboard, something else has changed, and we’re taking yet another turn. I’d like to think I’m a realist and optimist, so I KNOW this will end, and things will settle down, but quite frankly lately, I’m being tested. We all are. We’re experiencing another free fall, and there will be whiplash to some degree. How we brace for it will make all the difference to our brands, our companies and our livelihoods.
I hope you are, like me, buoyed by your team, and the fact that if history HAS taught us anything (especially the history of these last 18 months), we will persevere as an industry. So here’s what we CAN do while we watch and prepare.
Take a stand on vaccination. We recently made the decision to require all full-time employees be fully vaccinated from COVID. It is the number one way to protect our staff while working in-person and those at our events. I personally made the decision for my immediate family not to travel to see family who are not currently vaccinated at Thanksgiving. It’s one of the toughest calls I’ve had to make, but my instinct is telling me that until there are consequences (unfortunately, beyond just getting sick and/or passing COVID onto another), things aren’t going to change, personally and definitely not professionally. Consider supporting local efforts, like this one we started earlier this year. In numbers, there CAN be safety.
Stay intentional. While we all hibernated, we made the best of a bad situation. We stripped down to our bare essence and we got clear on our goals and intentions. We started climbing out of our fox hole in late spring 2021 and it felt SO. DAMN. GOOD. We began laying the groundwork on all our plans. And now we’re coping with Delta. It’s all too easy to shift back into the gear we’re comfortable in, but that’s going to set us back even further from achieving what we truly want - evolution and growth. As I wrote in last month's blog, stay the course, and do not accept anything less than what you’re worth. DO the things you set out to do. Stay strong.
Continue to meet, safely. When the pandemic hit, we were fortunate to have a virtual alternative for many of the events that still needed to go on. Even more so, we’ve seen massive improvement in the quality and variety of options now available to digital events and this is helping companies continue to meet when they cannot do so in person. Yet, live, as we all know, is where the majority of solid business deals are done. Humans need to look each other in the eye, establish trust, build rapport. Virtual offers an alternative to live, but it does not, and will not ever, replace the ability of an in-person meeting to close business. There ARE ways to meet safely; requiring vaccination proof and/or a negative COVID PCR test is the most extreme but most reliable way to mitigate risk. Continue wearing masks. And sanitize, sanitize, sanitize!
Stay flexible. Hard as it might be, we have learned to have a little more respect for predictability (or lack thereof recently!). We are also learning how to live with COVID among us and it is unknown whether or not it will ever be fully eradicated. This means we have to adapt along with it, and maintain a level of flexibility - even if that means we have to pitch and plan and design and execute two times or three times or more. We have been humbled, but flexibility is key to us staying united through this to the other side, whatever that side looks like. Stay open and communicative with your teams and your partners and your clients. You’ve been through the ringer already, so hopefully the bonds you’ve made are still there to help you stay honest with one another. The best thing we can do is offer grace and space as things continue to shift.
I don’t know about you, but I feel better than I did when I started writing this post. We humans are a resilient bunch and my belief is that with a little patience (I know we’ve already seen a lot of that these last 18 months) and perseverance we’re going to be alright. Stay strong, and safe out there.
Need some strategic insight for your next brand activation? We’d love to hear from you.
