April 8, 2020

You Got This, Love RG

By:

This month’s Brain Candy newsletter looks a little different, on purpose. The last thing you need is another preachy newsletter, or a ‘best tips for working from home’ post, or Crisis Communications 101. It’s time to speak directly, leader to leader, human to human. This quote from one of our favorite humans pretty much sums it up…

“If you’re feeling disoriented, it’s not you. It’s everyone.” – Governor Andrew M. Cuomo

Personally, I swing back and forth between feelings of uncertainty, confusion, sadness, optimism, inspiration and back to uncertainty. Professionally, I’m trying to stay focused on what I can control, which is to throw my energy and passion into leading the company and its amazing team without a lot of answers. I’d love to say that the experience of leading communications efforts through 9/11, Hurricane Sandy and the 2008 financial crisis helped prepare me for what’s happening to all of us right now. But it’s an entirely new playbook.

So, with this issue of our newsletter, what I want to say is you got this, and we at RG are here for you. Even in the face of this adversity, it’s vital that we continue to create, draw inspiration, encourage, laugh and give back where you can. This helps us stay on track within our virtual walls and helps our clients stay on track as well. Here’s what we’ve been up to—in hopes that it’s helpful.

CREATE

At Ricciardi Group, creating is part of our DNA. Lately, for our clients, we’ve:

Leaned in on internal communications, something that wasn’t a hot topic a few months ago—now it’s essential
Helped a client bring its new product to market—the Fallen Angel Score—a predictive financial tool to save time and resources when estimating bond yields
Re-thought messaging through a new lens, from aggregating stories of internal volunteerism to launching COVID-specific microsites, to setting up briefings and video content series from client leadership teams

Internally, we’ve:

Created a separate Slack channel dedicated to sharing uplifting ideas and data only. For example, this week’s playlist includes the Great Reset webinar and Google Ads data to help keep our finger on the pulse of consumer trends beyond our category

DRAW INSPIRATION

It helps to celebrate and draw inspiration from other brand marketers doing the right things, even from outside your industry. Ad Age created a regularly updated tracker of Marketers’ responses to coronavirus. We put together a quick hit list of our own below:

Yale offers their most popular course online for free
Adweek fulfills sports gambling vacancy with March Adness
Nike uses well-known brand identity for good with Play Inside campaign
Hubspot offers free tools, removes limitations and reduces prices
Morning Brew introduces your Daily Quarantine Planner
iHeart Media brings you a living room concert
Spartan Races pivots from live events to 24-7 content machine
Multiple Consumer Brands design social distancing logos
Interior Design/Decor Brands create Zoom backgrounds

ENCOURAGE

We strongly encourage employees and others to open up and share their own advice and feelings right now. It’s cathartic on a personal level and it helps others think more clearly about how to solve problems. Two RG employees have taken the initiative to put pen to paper and offer their own perspectives:

Jay DiPietro was featured in Gramercy Institute’s Newsletter sharing financial marketing advice in uncertain and changing times.
Matt San Giuliano published an article on Medium about how to humanize the recruiting process; something that’s relevant now more than ever.

In addition:

Cari Sommer, our partner at Raise, wrote a recent post about how leaders should share their experiences—and it’s so true. In other words, embracing the pivot.

LAUGH

It’s hard to be lighthearted these days, but there are powerful and proven benefits to laughing when you can. Whether you follow tanksgoodnews.com or The Office’s John Krasinski’s recently launched YouTube channel dedicated to good news, laughing is therapeutic. Here’s the proof.

GIVE BACK

Never underestimate the power of helping others! Built with love by volunteers from NYC, this platform from Team Main Street now includes over 47,000 businesses across 16 countries! Since we all know small business is the backbone of the world’s economy, one of our favorite ways to give back is to buy gift cards to provide these local heroes with cash support.

In the coming weeks, one thing we can be certain of is that the uncertainty will continue. All we can ask of ourselves is to do our best, remain optimistic and focus on what matters.

Thank you for reading.