Marketing in a Pandemic
I’m sitting at the kitchen table making adjustments to our marketing plan. While home is my usual place to work from, it’s not normally the kitchen table. My office - less than a minute from my front door, is vacant and I am truly “working from home” as I "be available" for our three teenage girls navigating their first day back into school with a whole new online setup. They’re all resourceful, incredibly savvy, connected and intelligent, so I know that they can conquer this new challenge to their way of life, as they’ve adapted to the other changes that have happened over the past few weeks. But I’m there, and available. A physical human, in their space.
Part way through the marketing plan, I get a question about logarithms. While I aced my maths papers at school, my current skills are pretty rusty through lack of application. Together we go over the basic principles and work out a forward path. It takes more than one brain to piece it together. Taking a brief break before heading back into “actual work” aka our marketing plan, both daughter and I check our emails. As she gasps in dismay at the amount of communication landing in her inbox, I feel compassion rising. There's a lot to adjust to in this new world.
Speaking later with an adult daughter, well established in life and managing lockdown in her own bubble, the comment was made “There’s so much noise being thrown at us.” Everywhere, people are trying to connect, trying to keep life together, keep going. And everywhere, other than in our bubbles, we’re feeling the want of human physical presence. All those areas we've brought home - work, friendships, leisure, entertainment - are confined to people we can see and hear through modern technology. There’s a glut of visual and audio messages working to connect us, and the kinesthetic is scant and limited.
Even though my brain hurt with the wrestling of rusty mechanisms this morning, the brightest spot in my working day so far has been wrestling alongside my sixteen year old to overcome a problem. That’s how we’ll make it out of this place. Whether drawing on rusty mechanisms long laid unused, or creating new ones to manage the issues that are laid on our tables, we will conquer the difficulties. Together, one at a time.
