For week three of our webinar series Best Practices for Brand Communications in Times of Uncertainty we changed gears and had the Cision Insights Team share the work they've done on COVID-19 media trends, including the most frequently discussed markets, topics, industries and companies, as well as exploring predictions for when PR and comms pros can start preparing for a re-entry into “normal” product and brand communications activities.
Before we dive into the reports, we have some important framing from Mark Weiner, Cision's Chief Insights Officer:
"We're tracking media trends; we're not commenting [on] or predicting anything about the rate of infection."
Mark also asks that we think of these reports and their findings as directional, not statistically significant. With that said, let's highlight some key takeaways from this discussion:
- Plan for a pivot point: There will be a local "Goldilocks window" for brands when the time is right to re-enter the market; it may be coming sooner than you think. To find it, monitor both cases and media coverage relative to your industry.
- While waiting for these windows, continue with a COVID-19 related strategy emphasizing community, workforce enablement, and more. The tech industry, for example, has been the second-largest in terms of media coverage because of the work some tech companies are doing to help in this unprecedented time.
- China is 7-8 weeks ahead of the rest of the world in this situation, so we can look to what brands are doing there for guidance on how to craft communications as we move toward our window of diminishing cases and related COVID-19 news coverage.
- Prepare content now for later phases of the pandemic; do not share any product news now.
We apologize again for the technical difficulties our webinar platform experienced during the live broadcast that made it impossible for many who registered to join. They were out of our control and we are working with our partner to ensure it does not happen again.
As always, we hope you are staying healthy and safe and please let us know if there is anything we can do to help you during this time.
