Blog Feed

Global trends post COVID-19 in Public Relations

Posted on by Neha Goyal

It goes without saying that during this unprecedented time that we are facing today is impacting both our personal and professional lives where we are learning to adapt and survive to this new normal. Similarly, the profession of Public Relations is also going through a change because here we need to communicate with various stakeholders in order to maintain goodwill, reputation, and trust as well as keep engaging with consumers.

This pandemic has changed the way we use to consume information and going digital is a new mantra. As businesses, brands and everything is finding space online so is the communication through platforms like e-paper, blogs, articles, podcasts, webinars, e-meetings, virtual events, and so on. With this shift of virtual or social experience, the need to develop relationships, build a reputation, and brand awareness is becoming more advanced day-by-day.

Public relations is playing the most important role in a crisis of this magnitude where they are:

  • Providing factual and trustworthy information
  • Being empathetic and transparent
  • Keeping employees and customer motivated

Other than the well-being of employees, customers, partners, and public safety; various organizations and brands are focusing on making people feel comfortable with the new normal.

The demand for creative solutions for various stakeholders is growing and having big budgets is not an option now. The focal point is more on how genuine sincerity, compassion, and humanity is shown as well as keeping the audience entertained 24*7. In the coming days, various trends in public relations are going to change. Some of them are:

  • Rewrite the corporate reputation playbook – As this pandemic is unfolding day by day, companies are also discovering the power of digital or social media. They can write about how digital media is helping them, the crisis or disasters that they have been facing in real-time and how they are successfully emerging from it. It is also important to show equity, diversity, and inclusion as the core values. Showcasing how they are future-proofing their business in this difficult time can also be one of the topic that can be covered in the playbook.
  • Prioritizing employees – Not everyone is going to feel safe post COVID, corporate houses need to work harder to make their employees safe. It can be done by making their employees feel supported emotionally, physically, and psychologically. For example, not everyone will feel comfortable in telling how they feel about interacting or getting in contact with others. Organizations can put wrist bands on the entrance of different colors stating what that color band means. For example, red color means the person wants to maintain distance. This way, the organization is helping its employees to subtly communicate among themselves about how much they are comfortable.
  • Experimental marketing is going hybrid – Large gatherings, events, and press conferences are not going to start anytime soon. Experiences are getting redesigned where communicators are working to be a blend of life and digital. Brands need to alter the way they interact and have to come up with technology-based campaigns.
  • Infodemic – The traditional outlets need to adapt modern formats quickly to deliver essential facts and invalidate rumors and disinformation. We are already seeing a lot of print publications across the globe is already shifting to digital media as reliable information and preeminent voices are the need of the hour. Even brands need to come up with new creative ideas where they can be the thought leaders in their certain categories to stand out in the cluttered market space.
  • Understand people’s vulnerabilities and hopes – Instead of just focusing on how can brand sell their product, they also need to learn and manage how to understand the vulnerabilities of their consumers in the ongoing scenario and accordingly fulfill their hopes.
  • Build media relations on the virtual platform – Public relations professionals need to build a relationship with journalists as it helps them to communicate about their brand. But during this social distancing time, it is getting difficult as they are facing problems in doing so especially the newcomers. Creating a special portal for virtual interaction to build relationships is the need of the hour and is also going to become a new normal.
  • Re-invest in employees – In this time, it is important for leaders to re-invest in their employee’s learning and training to be more active, be highly advanced digitally and come up with communication tactics for these platforms. Not only this, professionals also need to learn how to evaluate outcome of the campaigns that they will start doing more digitally in the coming days.

Public relations as a profession is a very dynamic fraternity that keeps changing with time. It is important for professionals to stay ahead of the curve as big problems demand big changes and to face this new chapter, organizations will need to prepare and plan.

The Importance of Measurement in Public Relations

Posted on by Neha Goyal

When we think about our life, do we always try to measure our happy and sad moments?

Well, we all know it’s a debatable topic but the concluding point that we all will arrive at is sometimes we do it very enthusiastically and sometimes we don’t. In our life, we all have come across a famous quote that says, “Not everything that matters can be measured, and not everything that can be measured, matters.”

But that is not the case with our professional life. When it comes to our business we all want to know its impact on our consumers. A brand relies on its reputation whether it is good or bad. To protect and nurture, a brand puts a lot of effort that also includes promoting and building a perspective through public relations. But while investing money the most common question companies ask is, ‘Does Public Relations work?’, ‘How can we understand what is working for our brand and what is not?’ or ‘What’s the ROI we are getting?’

A PR campaign needs to be measured not only because it is a client’s requirement but it helps the consultancy as well in the following ways:

  • Measure our work more strategically and improve our future campaigns
  • What does our target audience expect from the brand
  • To know what part of the campaign was beneficial and what was detrimental
  • Understand which platform is mainly used by our target consumers
  • Make the outcomes more effective than the outputs
  • Can lead to more opportunities through the derived new insights that might change an approach and create a larger impact
  • Results will be more concrete and will help in understanding the difference between short term and long term results

Traditionally, measuring public relations was a struggle and people started doing it through Advertising Value Equivalency (AVE). A lot of PR consultancies in our country still use the AVE method, without understanding the unique dynamics of public relations compared to advertising.

We, communication professionals, work to build goodwill, reputation, affinity, trust and create engagement among its various stakeholders. While doing this, a comparison of earned media with paid media and calculating according to its size and placement can be stated as an invalid metric. Therefore AVE can show us misleading data as it lacks a correct methodology for us to understand how it impacted an organisation’s goodwill, helped in achieving the business objective, or how it increased the demand for that product/service.

The conversation around PR measurement still seems uncomfortable but the change is happening. A commitment to measurement is a commitment to improvement. It will help us to develop learning experiences, identify and gauge our target audience, plan for the future, and achieve business objectives. Therefore, using the right measurement tool can lead to better things in the world of public relations as we cannot change the past, but we can still do a lot for the future.

Wrong information can cause panic

Posted on by Neha Goyal

Recently, I read a news article that stated how during this global health crisis a lab in Thane, Mumbai is sealed by the government because they gave fake COVID positive reports to people. The reason behind this is the lab has a connection with private hospitals. After giving fake positive reports they send the patient to those particular hospitals who have got the package of three lakhs rupees for COVID patients. This false news turned the lives of these citizens upside down. (Source: https://mumbaimirror.indiatimes.com/coronavirus/news)

Well, I wonder how do people even get such ideas in a situation where the world is struggling, people are facing anxiety and depression due to lockdown, pay-cut, unemployment, and so on.

There is a great deal of subjectivity on where its boundaries begin and end. There have been instances where not only ordinary people but there have been several instances where doctors, journalists, and public figures have also played a role in spreading fake news stories.

Communicators have been trying different methods to bust the myths and fake news. People keep spreading wrong news by forwarding messages on WhatsApp or post it on social media without even cross-checking it. To get rid of this, campaigns are done to stop people from spreading the wrong information.

In 2018, WhatsApp did its first television campaign where they urged and spoke about ‘Share joy and not rumours’. They took the comprehensive efforts to educate Indians about unauthentic forwarded messages and dangers of fake news. They addressed this issue through three videos ads that focused on ordinary people teaching their close ones, how they can avoid being the propagators of fake news. These videos were available on television, cinemas, YouTube, and social media sites like Facebook.

Last month, even TikTok initiated a short video campaign ‘Mat Kar Forward’ to educate people about misinformation on social media platforms, and the circulation of fake news cause panic. It was directed by Anurag Basu and actors like Ayushmann Khurrana, Sara Ali Khan, and Kriti Sanon and cricketer Virat Kohli came together to discourage people from forwarding messages that can lead to misinformation and hate crimes. Their segments have been digitally patched as it was done during the lockdown.

Like this, various brands have been making efforts in a simple and smart manner to encourage them to stop forwarding messages, pictures, and videos that do not have verified information.  

Towards the new learning’s

Posted on by Neha Goyal

Like a lot of people, even I am one of them who has thought about what I would have been doing if we weren’t facing this pandemic and lockdown. Well, most of the time my thoughts were related to how my life would have been right now in Mumbai. This week I completed my 10 months post-graduate program from my home which would have in actual ended with me being with my friends enjoying the last few days of course.

In the past 10 months, we have done a lot of stuff that is usually not so common in every PR and communication institute. Be it attending and volunteering at major PR events of the country, masterclasses by top professionals of the industry, workshops on various skills, experts taking our regular classes, or building connections. But then the pandemic happened which gave us a new virtual world to learn and do various things.

Since we are graduating, in the past two weeks we have attended various masterclasses by the top leaders of top PR consultancies. All of them shared their journey where they told us their stories, their experiences, how they have learned, and how they reached where they are today. At the end of the session, they all left us with some guidelines that we as a fresher should follow. Some of the points that were shared by all of them are:

  1. Ignorance is not bliss. Always keep learning and reading, ask the right questions, and understand your business inside out. Investing in yourself helps to expand your horizon.
  2. Chose a mentor for yourself and learn to leverage good things from them.
  3. Learn to build connections with people in every interaction.
  4. Always take a moment to reflect on what you do and be focused on self-awareness. It helps to know your strengths, weakness, and attitude.
  5. Play devil’s advocate with yourself and be your own critique.
  6. Never give up. You may not give your best but it is okay because initiative, will to work, and motivating yourself is very important.
  7. You can do anything in life but not everything.

With all the learning’s in the past 10 months these are some of the thoughts that I take with me as I start my career in the world of public relations and communications.

110. The Communicators’ Assembly Point – 3

Posted on by Neha Goyal

Focus- ‘Healthcare Communications’

It’s been more than 60 days since the Janta curfew happened in India which led to a lockdown and the number of COVID’19 cases has been rising since then. Before all this started we all remember how in early March, we were hunting for facemasks and hand sanitisers to stay away from this so-called virus. But do you remember those fake news getting spread on WhatsApp and other platforms that said we can cure this disease by eating garlic, liquor can be used instead of sanitiser, and so on.

Well, we have come a long way since then and now when one goes to the pharmacy they can easily find sanitisers in multiple colors by multiple brands. But, how did the healthcare sector managed the turbulence of this pandemic? How are they communicating with their various stakeholders and also busting fake news that is getting spread? How are they navigating reputation in the Post-COVID era? How do they plan to take communication ahead? This week, on the third edition of The Communicators’ Assembly Point, organised by Adfactors PR in partnership with Reputation Today focused on the ‘Healthcare Communications’.

“Post-COVID is not the right term because all the conversation in the healthcare right now is that for a foreseeable future we might have to learn to live with it so, when is post-COVID is actually nobody can predict,” says Noumaan Qreshi the healthcare practice lead at Adfactors PR who moderated the discussion. He also shared that the data analysis of the news coverage says that since the lockdown, ‘healthcare’ has got the highest visibility in terms of all the subjects.

Technology Adoption

Jasrita Dhir, Head of Brand, Marketing, & CSR, Fortis Healthcare started the conversation on this topic by taking the example of the city Bangalore when medical councils were not willing to issue a certification for e-consulting. She said, “Bangalore is one of the markets that said we need to mitigate the risk to both health care workers as well as ourselves.” She also mentioned that all market is not the same and requires a different level of patience and communication tools as “one size doesn’t fit all”.

Ms. Dhir also spoke about how like any other crisis even during the beginning of COVID healthcare communicators had to deal and bust the fake news and myths that were going around as well as share the government policies with people.

By now, we all are aware of one of the facts about diagnostics is that it’s highly technical and scientific for a layman to understand. “Diagnostics has always been in the backyards, wherein most of the hospital diagnostics labs are in the basement,” says Rufina Magline, Head of Communications, Roche Diagnostics. She shares, “In COVID times we are talking about the importance of diagnostics. It forms the bases of 60% of all clinical decisions in the world.” She opines that “The role of healthcare communicators today is not so much as talking about the adoption of technology but rather simplifying the role of technology in healthcare communications.”

Bhavna Singh the Senior Director Communications of OPPI highlighted a very important statement which we all will agree to is, “Today more than ever, the whole world is looking at the healthcare industry with very expectant eyes to come out with a probable solution to the pandemic”. She shares that the stories of researchers, scientists, inspiration, motivation, and stories of their team is something they are doing to engage with their audience.

“Leveraging the adoption of technology is something that we cannot push away,” says Manjira Sharma the Head of External Communications, Lupin. She shared how her team and the new trainees have been “communicating on virtual platforms”. Even the doctors and patients in smaller cities had to figure out a way to communicate with each other and virtual communication was needed to maintain the social distancing.

Future communication opportunities

People are seeking for the right information and as a communicator it is important to share ‘authentic, sharp and focused information’ and with the help of digital we can share ‘personalized’ message as well, shares Bhavna.  

Jasrita says, the communication has been happening across the spectrum was ‘patient-centric’ but the collaboration between the private sector and government came across really well. Also the role of communicators was in ‘laying the fears and injecting positivity’.

We need to understand that healthcare is all about responsibility towards people and we cannot be seen as opportunistic. But we also need to remember that people are going to believe what we are saying, says Rufina. Adding to that she says that, striding the right balance of sounding and being sensitive to the needs of people and healthcare communication is not a privilege but a ‘responsibility’ where one needs to ‘be careful’ with what they are communicating.  

Manjira opines that it is the responsibility of communicators to burst and debunk myths, and fake news that is revolving around the internet. As practitioners, we not only have to talk to our customers and leadership teams about COVID but also other diseases that we can’t leave behind like hospital access becoming difficult. The frontline conversation needs to be done with full ‘transparency’ and ‘responsible communication’ across all important areas.

Contextual Listening

There is a lot of appetite to listen among consumers but it is not just important to listen but also drive them to decision making, shares Rufina. ‘We are not ahead of the curve but we are just catching the tail. We might not have answers every time but we do try to respond to them. We also are working on mental health issues, listening, and helping people through free helpline’ shares Jasrita. She also highlights a point that we have been learning all this while is “the crisis of today overtakes and overshadows the crisis of yesterday. But, it shouldn’t happen in the case of healthcare.” Adding to that she said ‘It is important for we communicators to listen and be responsive all the time.’

Bhavna pointed out the golden rule for a communicator that says ‘listen more and speak less’. Adding to that she says, ‘it’s not COVID that is going to drive the ecosystem of healthcare but the patient’s well being’.

Top priorities for healthcare communicators

Bhavna shares, ‘Sensitizing patients’, ‘infusing positivity and hope’, and ‘regain and rebuild trust’ with various stakeholders. Manjira opines that during COVID, healthcare communicators shouldn’t forget other priorities as well and ‘proactively do mainline campaigns’ to remove the stigma against COVID.

Rufina says that, it is important for healthcare communicators to ‘continue and build on the goodwill’ and ‘enhance the reputation’ of the healthcare industry as a sector among diverse stakeholders. Jasrita highlights that it is important for healthcare communicators to ‘find the balance between agility of response and ensuring the veracity of response’, ‘celebrate the stories of recovery’, and ‘lead the digital transformation journey for their own organisation’.

In conclusion, I would like to say that it was a very insightful and interesting discussion that was held. It left the viewers with a better understanding of how healthcare communicators are dealing with the current situation, what they should keep in mind while communicating with their stakeholders in the near future, and how this pandemic has made the healthcare sector adapt to becoming digital. As we all know, this is the time when e-consulting and telemedicine came in more vigorously in India which says a lot about how the use of digital is going to increase.

As Jasrita said, ‘We are in it together; either we are going to swim together or going to sink together. Hopefully swim together.”

Reference: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6UXBFtMeKcc

109. Start with Why

Posted on by Neha Goyal

How great leaders inspire everyone to take action

Author: Simon Sinek

Published: 2009

The British-American author Simon Sinek’s one of the life purposes is to inspire people to do things they want to do. Through his book ‘Start with why’ he helps people to get inspired by giving examples of great leaders who articulate the term ‘why’ in their company’s existence as compared to ‘what it does’ or ‘how they do it’ to be more successful.

Sinek says that one should look at the bigger picture for its organisation as it can shape a person’s behaviour to drive long term results rather than making assumptions. He says that leaders can either ‘manipulate’ to get the end result or can ‘inspire’ people by starting with the end result in mind to succeed naturally. To manipulate the consumers, brands use short-term solutions like pricing and promotions which can impact long-term profitability.

To avoid getting affected, Sinek shares his discovery of The Golden Circle whose three parts are- Why, How, and What. In this, part of the book he gives the example of Apple by stating how they communicate the ‘Why’ of their brand where they challenge the status as well as empower the individual. If brands start communicating why they do things instead of what, they will see an immense change in audience engagement. He says “Knowing your Why is not the only way to be successful, but it is the only way to maintain a long-lasting success and have a greater blend of innovation and flexibility.”  

The author highlights how businesses grow because of employees who believe in the same thing as the brand does. A lot of big companies like Apple and Dell follow this while hiring their employees as they don’t want to motivate them but inspire them and it helps them fit in their culture.

Sinek explains the difference between motivating and inspiring personality through the example of Bill Gates and Steve Ballmer. He says that Balmer’s speech energises people but tends to disperse quickly. But Gate’s charismatic personality makes people not only listen to him but also remember it for a long time. Here he tries to say that loyalty is attracted to charisma and not energy.

The ‘why’ and ‘how’ factor also determines the vision and mission statements of an organisation. In this, the ‘why’ of the founder of an organisation is the vision and ‘how’ it will create that future is the mission. The ‘why’ controls all the decision-making process whereas the ‘what’ of the company controls the rational thought.

Through this book, Sinek also shares the examples of brands like Walmart and Volkswagen who have lost the sight of their original ‘why’. He says that when Walmart was initially launched it came up with an idea to help people by providing products at low prices. But after the death of its owner, the company focused on low prices but became competitive towards its employees, supplier, and also communities. In the example of Volkswagen, he says that the brand stood to sell affordable cars to everyone but started launching expensive cars and lost the touch with the actual ‘why’ of the brand.

We all know ideas are fuelled by passion but for it to thrive and survive ‘how’ and ‘why’ needs to work together for a company to be successful. Brands need to find their ‘whys’ and remain true to it. Most of the organisations start with their ‘whys’ but only great ones are able to maintain it till the end.

It’s a book that was recommended to me by one of mentor and also by one of my friends. It is an insightful and interesting book. In this book, the author cites various examples of brands that are known globally. The book is helpful to students, entrepreneurs, employees, and even 45-year-old business professional to find out that ‘why’ in their lives. As Simon Sinek says, “Finding ‘Why’ is a process of discovery, not invention.”

108. Economic Downturn

Posted on by Neha Goyal

A rare disaster or as we call it the pandemic that we are facing today has not only taken the lives of a larger number of human beings but also their livelihood. As every country has been implementing necessary quarantines, social distancing, and lockdowns people are experiencing an unlikely collapse of various activities. In many countries, other than the health crises people are also facing financial crises due to the standstill of various industries. Even after all the support that we have been receiving from government and policymakers, the economic landscape looks uncertain after we emerge from this lockdown. Some professionals and theories predict it can lead to a financial crisis bigger than the ‘Global Financial Crisis of 2008’.

In the late 2000s, the sharp decline in economic activity was ‘The Great Recession’ which officially lasted in the U.S from December 2007 to June 2009 and globally in 2009. The reports identified to understand the recession said it happened due to government failure to regulate the financial industry, too many financial firms taking too much risk, excessive borrowing by consumers and corporations. It began in August 2007, with the seizure in the banking system precipitated by BNP Paribas announcing that it was ceasing the activity in three hedge funds that specialized in US mortgage debt. Due to this people started losing trust and banks stopped doing business with each other. 

In September 2008, Lehman Brothers went bankrupt which resulted in believe that every bank is risky. The banks were rescued just in time, but it was too late to prevent the global economy from going into recession. Credit flows to the private sector stopped as people had no trust or confidence. Fiscal and monetary expansions lead to the failure of the banking system spread across the world in both developing and non-developing countries.

Due to this, a lot of people were sacked across the globe and were facing financial as well as unemployment issues. Unemployment was at 5% at the end of 2007, reached a high of 10% in October 2009, and did not recover to 5% until 2015, nearly eight years after the beginning of the recession. The difficulties were faced by people, who were uneducated, highly-qualified, unskilled, migrant workers, and workers on a temporary contract.  

In 2008, in India, the Nifty crash was almost 65% from the peak spread over several months but this time 30% crash happened within a few days. During that time, it was a huge financial crisis but the real economy was working. But that is not what the case is as the real economy has been on a halt from many weeks and months due to the total shutdown in most parts of the world.

Due to the disruptions caused by COVID’19 millions of people are filing for unemployment benefits across the globe and advanced countries have been affected the most. Travel, tourism, hospitality, aviation, fashion, is some of the sectors that have been affected badly. Even if economic activities resume gradually, it will take time for the situation to get better or normal as how the pandemic is going to evolve is uncertain.

References:

107. Brands during crisis

Posted on by Neha Goyal

We all are aware that today we are facing a global health crisis which can highly lead to the economic crisis as well. From past weeks, during this lockdown where customers are rarely visiting stores, e-commerce facing logistics issues, people working remotely, businesses facing out of stock due to the closure of factories, radical shift in demand for certain products have disrupted habitual behaviours of customers to shop and communicate in new ways. Considering the current situation we are facing and what we might face in the coming future, brands need to stay relevant amid crisis.

How brands react and communicate during such crisis shapes the perception of the consumers. The brand’s reputation and equity hinges on elements like trust, empathy, authenticity, emotional bonding, and ethics. During this crisis, as an aspiring PR professional, I have attended a few webinars and sessions that taught me how brands should maintain and strengthen their connection with their stakeholders. Some of the things a brand should do during a crisis are:

  • A brand should be proactive, spontaneous, and respond immediately during a crisis. Whenever anything goes wrong all the stakeholders look up to the brand to communicate and tell them what happened. So before any fake news starts spreading and people make their assumptions it’s better for brands to be the first ones to respond.
  • It is important to be connected with its stakeholders by being frequent and keep informing them about the actual situation and steps they will take to maintain transparency.
  • In times, of a global or industry crisis, brands should extend their support. They can extend it through donations, providing discounts, or offering a product or a service to people.
  • The brands need to be extra cautious during such situation and the messaging should be as per the context and situation by showing empathy and staying relevant.
  • Brands need to anticipate and adapt to the situation. Adapting to the situation helps brands to connect with their audience. Anticipating the possible scenarios help brands to be more prepared that helps them to be more confident while implementing the changes.
  • As digital technology is growing these days, it is getting more important for brands to communicate digitally. Brands can create digital content by thinking of ideas that can help them to engage with their customers.
  • They should make consumers feel that they are being heard. Therefore, they should use multichannel communication to engage with its consumers like email, website, social media, SMS, and so on. This will ensure that their queries, concerns, and complaints are getting answered.
  • In times of uncertainty, brands should utilise their budget mindfully. Building the credibility of the brand innovatively is more important than prioritising sales promotion.  

In times of crisis, employees look up to their leaders for information, direction, and assurance. Whereas, people look up to brands for the same. Brands should never try to be opportunistic during crisis and be the leader of change and hope.

106. #WorkForDoctors

Posted on by Neha Goyal

There is no denying that COVID’19 is changing the face of many businesses and how they are communicating during this time. For the majority of the people, this is a new and unwelcome reality as they are not living their ordinary life, the way they use to do just a few weeks ago. Due to which the communicating pattern of the brands is evolving. Despite the natural doom and gloom, brands are on their feet to survive as they are leaving no opportunities to adapt in their message.

We all are aware that in spite of the uncertainty caused, there are still many people who are continuously working during this outbreak. From hospital to pharmacies, to security companies to grocery stores, to delivery services, to transportation and logistics companies to police, are the nation’s heroes doing everything possible for us. A lot of brands came forward to help and motivate them by contributing or giving a salute to them.

While most of us are thankful for the doctors, nurses, and emergency workers, #ARM Worldwide, along with Huami Amazfit and PR Innovations came forward and launched a digital campaign called #WorkForDoctors. They launched the campaign when the cases started increasing in our country and the government decided to have a whole nation lockdown and work from home in March. During this time, we also know that there was an extreme shortage and surge pricing of N95 masks, Personal Protective Equipments (PPE), and other medical necessities. Their main objective for this campaign was to reach out and offer invaluable support and aid to these frontline heroes who are risking their lives to save ours.

In this non-profit initiative, #WorkForDoctors campaign, the brands crafted an integrated campaign and launched two digital films. It focused on its key communication of requesting people which stated, “Let’s not just work from home, but rather #WorkForDoctors”. Other than that, the brand also reached out to over 150 fashion, lifestyle, and fitness influencers to create conversations about helping doctors, spread awareness of the cause and make a difference in current healthcare stress. The campaign was backed by a 24*7 support team working on queries that were received constantly from various doctors across India on WhatsApp helpline, social media, and website.

#WorkForDoctors campaign gained 6 million views across platforms and successfully served 15000 doctors on duty from more than 160 hospitals with an overall content reach of 125 million. This campaign moved beyond social media and received support from IndiaPost to send supplies all over India. It helped in donating N95 masks and other medical equipment to various government hospitals, private clinics, and the Indian army. Some of them are places like AIIMS New Delhi, CMO Ayodhya Govt Hospital, Ram Manohar Lohia Hospital New Delhi, Human Care Medical Charitable Trust, Dwarka, SN Medical College Agra, and so on.

This campaign helps us to understand the power of digital media during this difficult time. Due to staying inside our homes, people have become more reliant on digital services that allow us to know and grasp the content online.

Reference:
https://www.indiantelevision.com/mam/marketing/mam/amazfit-s-workfordoctors-campaign-from-armworldwide-garnered-over-6m-views-200430
https://www.afaqs.com/companies/arm-worldwide-covid19-campaign

105. This Last Week

Posted on by Neha Goyal

Today morning when I woke up, I didn’t even realise which day it is until I checked my mail and saw it’s the day to write my weekly blog. Like many people even I don’t know from past how many days we been under lockdown. From the past few weeks we have been reading and talking all about COVID’19 and we are bound to do the same for a few more weeks or maybe months.

Even before the government imposed lockdown, my institute gave me work from home. I came back to my hometown and instantly got caught up with ‘work from home’ jazz. All this while I was busy attending online classes, doing my assignments, dissertation, and not to forget the webinars and online events. But from last week our schedule has been light with fewer classes and assignments.

For those who are wondering what am I actually trying to do here is get a topic for my today’s blog. On Friday, I had my regular class with one of the top PR professional Nikhil Dey, the Vice-chairman of Weber Shandwick India. He mentioned how every Sunday he writes a blog which is like his journal where he talks about his whole week and key learnings. Well, till now I don’t intend to do so but to share how my week was.

This week I have spent my time reading articles like how e-commerce is raising their stake by getting in the grocery sector, how overnight Facebook bought shares of Reliance, how reputation managers are communicating during this pandemic, and so on. Not only this, but my long pending fiction book is finally out from my shelf and has a got a bookmark in it. I am back to my daily routine of watching at least a movie or an episode or two once a day on Netflix.

I have also utilised my week my defeating my younger brother in Ludo and online games, catching up with my friends by maintaining the protocol of social distancing through video calls and made my mom happy by cooking more often, which I generally avoid doing when I am home.

Not to forget, but during this challenging time, I enjoyed myself by eating a lot and sleeping more than usual. In the coming week, I plan to paint something insignificant and clean my cupboard. Looks like, it is always not so bad being unproductive.