I will never forget the moment, sitting in my car outside my office, when I heard Gov. Gavin Newsom’s press conference about his first stay-at-home order at the beginning of the pandemic. Up until that moment, the COVID-19 virus sweeping both the globe and the news cycle didn’t feel all that “real.” Then, suddenly, it was.
While I’m sure most people started thinking about the health and safety of their loved ones, as a business owner and leader of two dozen people I immediately began running scenarios through my head, some simple and pedantic; do we have enough laptops for people to work from home? Will this really last two weeks or can we come back to work sooner? Some scenarios were much, much darker – will this crush the economy like the housing market collapse in 2008? Will our clients weather this storm with us? After ruminating on all these issues for a few minutes, I kicked into high gear and started making calls. By the end of Day 1 we had an SOP for remote work, all employees had at least a decent workstation for their new home office, we pulled the trigger on several project management and team communication platforms, and – with great sorrow – I leaned out our workforce by cutting our administrative and office support staff while asking senior management to step in and help with the tasks once handled by our now-former coworkers.
On Day 2 we got to work. I called every client and spoke to them candidly: as a PR and marketing agency that specializes in automotive, luxury and outdoor sports clients, I was deeply concerned that their businesses would be impacted in the same way consumers cut “hobby spending” during the Great Recession. We had to push back against that. Many clients were scared – of the pandemic, the unknown, and the possibility of economic collapse. Any client that asked for a rate or retainer reduction got it, and I vowed to stick with every company that stuck with us. We’d weather the storm together and build our businesses back together – even stronger. As it turns out, that was a wise move, and every client that did trim their retainer put it back within months and those relationships are stronger than ever.
We also leaned hard into helping clients with direct-to-consumer sales.
Many of our clients are manufacturing concerns who lean on multi-step distribution models. (They sell to warehouse distributors, who then in turn sell to the retailer or big box store that than sells to the consumer). I was deeply concerned that the shutdown would impact brick-and-mortar retail sales, so we asked our digital marketing team and our web design team to help clients find ways to sell their products directly online. It worked – and we heard from several client CEOs that we helped save their business.
Then things got interesting. Unlike the Great Recession of 2008-09, when consumer spending plummeted, something different happened. As the pandemic and lockdowns dragged on, many consumers were locked up at home with nowhere to go, nothing to do, and more disposable income than they were used to since they weren’t buying gas or paying for dry cleaning. So… they spent more money on their hobbies. The mountain bike industry boomed. An RV client that in March was worried about having to implement mass layoffs was suddenly worried about running out of raw materials. The auto parts industry experienced record sales.
I recognize that we are extremely fortunate to work primarily with industries that were unharmed by the lockdowns. My heart breaks for the small business owners and their employees in the restaurant, travel and hospitality industries. We have clients in those spaces, and I know first-hand how hard this past year has been for them. With that in mind we decided to help as many businesses as we could. We began producing weekly newsletters packed with information on everything from how to improve your social media presence to building your first digital marketing campaign to “newsjacking” the media cycle for positive PR in the times of COVID. In all we produced over 40 newletters, nearly 70 how-to articles and blogs, a dozen panel discussions with business owners and several white papers – all offered at no charge in an effort to help. At first, I leaned into all this extra work as a distraction, a way to stay busy and keep my team focused in a scary time, with the added benefit of helping people in the process. Clients began to realize that while the business environment was dynamic and very different than what we were used to, it wasn’t the end times we all feared. After a while I realized that, too.
Then, somewhere along the way, the “temporary” solution to a worldwide pandemic began to feel better than the old way of doing things. I was spending more time with my family. Employees were happier and more effective.
We were more efficient, leaner and managed to still turn a profit.
Our thrust into digital and D2C marketing was so successful it became an entirely new division of the agency.
So, we keep marching forward. California is opening back up, vaccines are widely available, traffic has returned to the 101 and 405 freeways, and hopefully sometime soon life will get back to normal. But my hope is that at least in my little corner of the world, some of the lessons we learned will stick around. Dan Kahn is founder of Kahn Media, a public relations firm in Moorpark.
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