Brand Communications with Heart During COVID
You don’t have to look far or too long to find examples of people going above and beyond to support their community.
Many brands are doing the same.
We could generate miles and miles of pages featuring examples of companies stepping up their offerings to manufacture equipment and resources to treat sick individuals and fight the spread of COVID – or organizations funding furloughed workers and others impacted significantly by the inability to work at this time – or businesses offering up their services and technology to help teammates continue to connect and collaborate while they work remote and stay safe at home.
For the sake of this post, however, we’re going to focus on how brands are amping up their communications to support individuals and foster community in this global pandemic.
Here are some pretty cool ones that we’ve found:
1) Zappos: 🥰 “Customer Service for Anything”
Zappos now offers customer service for anything – grocery shopping, ordering out, or just someone to talk to during this time of severe social isolation.
I already had a tremendous culture crush on these peeps and this effort just adds to it.
If you haven’t heard about their record for longest customer service support call, check that out, but this example of offering up an ear to bend is just freakin’ awesome.
2) Signarama Fond du Lac: 🖍 Family fun activities
Not only was Signarama one of the first local companies we noticed supporting the community with free offerings and encouraging emphasis on additional communications for businesses, this team also acknowledged a major need to support parents/children at home with a fun, family time activity – GIANT COLORING WALLS.
3) Fireball Whisky: 💰 World’s biggest tip jar
Fireball Whisky has taken the the challenge of creating and filling the World’s Biggest Tip Jar to benefit bartenders and service industry workers in this challenging time =
https://www.gofundme.com/f/BiggestTipJar
4) Chiquita: 🍌 staying home to keep others safe
Chiquita brand encouraged social distancing and staying at home to flatten the curve with a simple yet super impactful profile image update of their iconic logo without Miss Chiquita, who was “already home.”
5) Thinkwell-livewell.com: 
#HereForYou free offer
Thinkwell-Livewell.com, a web application client of ours, is offering up free access to their psychologist-recommended wellbeing resources with their #HereForYou campaign – which acknowledges the crucial importance of our mindset and mental health in our collective fight to stay well.
6) Society Insurance: 🎸 Internal communications & culture for the win
Last but definitely not least…
We want to highlight an extraordinary example of internal communications as it’s not always what makes the AdWeek headlines.
But, in our opinion, it’s the MOST. IMPORTANT. WORK. we can do within the virtual walls of our organizations.
While there are likely tons of great examples of internal brand communications to support optimism and ongoing teamwork happening behind the scenes, Society Insurance made us laugh with their entertaining, themed spirit week conference calls and warmed our hearts with their CEO’s weekly check-in and remote-work-rendition of “Hallelujah.”
Spirit week included 80s day, sports day, pajama day, bring your dog to work, and get outside day.
Rick Parks, CEO of Society Insurance, has a great reputation for supporting his team with regular video check-ins. Thanks for the inspiration, Rick!
Again, if you have some others to add to the list – email ‘em over!