Hug'd - Sandra 2

Top of Sandra’s agenda for this morning was the automation of social media accounts. Or to be more precise, the de-automation of social media accounts. With only two major accounts still running she still had numerous possibles and potentials, people she’d done odd jobs for via social media and other channels, and who, aside from the odd payment for work here and there, had yet to come on board with her fully.

In the weeks running up to the lockdown she’d impressed several of these with the ability to stack diverse messages ready to head out over Twitter and Instagram over the coming weeks, raising their company’s profile automatically and delivering a call to action to potential customers.

Unfortunately, not one of those automated messages took into account the lockdown and business disruption which had now occurred. Consequently her fantastically well thought out, managed and executed scheme was so out of step with the times, it was a positive liability. Amazing marketing messages had been churning out into the ether, together with beautifully selected and framed images, only to be met with apathy, misdirected calls and occasional animosity – particularly if they were advertising an event or gathering of industry professionals. If the police were now clamping down on occurrences of three unrelated people being too close together there may be the outside possibility that they’d ask her to stop encouraging people to break the rules.

In a fit of over-enthusiasm and desperation to keep the clients she had, Sandra had called pretty much everyone and appraised them of the situation, promising at the same time to take all of the pre-loaded content down and replace it with something, less controversial, more empathetic, but still retaining the stylistic and compelling branding which they had come to expect of SXD PR. Everyone had been impressed, and she had given herself an almighty pat on the back for being so pro-active, so forward thinking and so assiduous in working for the good of her business and that of her clients. 

Which just left her with one question. What would she replace it all with? It wasn’t enough – wouldn’t be enough – to flood the media with messages of events cancelled. This was sort of obvious for everyone – no one in their right mind would have turned up anyway – and was a wholly negative message to send out. It gave the impression that her clients were slowly packing their things away, reducing down to the bare bones. This was undoubtedly true but no one wanted to admit to it. Everyone wanted to show how they were fighting the good fight, supporting their workers and generally being the best they could be even at a time of great difficultly. 

So how to plaster an unchallengeable positive over such an abundant negative?

The first changes were pretty easy. This was a time of crisis hitting everyone one way or another. The first move was to express sadness, sympathy, unity, empathy. The first half dozen messages flew from her fingertips in a flurry of phrases which neatly skimmed condescension while nailing concern. But after that her thoughts and phrases started to feel cliched. There were only so many times she could write about the unprecedented times, framing them according to the sector and business she was addressing.

After the tenth take she needed a breather and was desperate for some other target for her word counts.

Carefully she opened a dedicated word document and and immediately saved it with password to a dedicated folder marked ‘Unprecedented’ to ensure there was no way she would accidentally send this anywhere else and if she did no one else would see it. She was going to write something to free her mind, but it was just to do that – and right now whatever that ended up being she didn’t think it would be readable by anyone else. 

Having done this she armed herself with the second machine capsule generated cappuccino of the day (strict rations), closed her eyes and let her mind go blank. What did she want to write? She wanted to write what she wanted. What she actually wanted within this maelstrom of denial.

When she opened her eyes, five minutes later she’d written one word.

HUG

Sighing and resigned that this was a dead end and required brain rather than heart she moved to close the file. And then it hit her. Those three letters indicated what many people wanted – maybe not a hug – but maybe a virtual hug. Maybe just contact. 

She opened the list of organisations she’d spoken with. Who would want to hug whom, she wondered? In an ideal world, were these organisations people and she were a match maker, who’d go down the pub with each other, who’d kick it off with each other and who would just stare sullenly, hoping the other would buy a drink or make an excuse and leave?

And gradually she matched them up. They didn’t need her to talk to them, she decided, they needed to talk to each other. Over twitter, over a press release, over a conference call. And she would record it and whatever message came out of it, she would put it out there.

A PR love-in to encapsulate the times.