Last time we presented some thoughts on providing new content during a crisis. While we touched a little on the idea of crassly exploiting fear and uncertainty (we won’t ever do that), the more important point we wanted to convey is that there are times when a firm has a moral obligation to provide new content. Specifically, if your firm knows something that should be shared with your customers or with the general public, especially if it involves health and safety, you should recognize that you have a duty to do that. If the best you can do—or if one of the ways you’re able to do that—is to continue posting new and updated information on your business blog, then that’s something you should not hesitate about. Do it.
For instance, we recommended that health care providers (potential consumers of our WordWorks: CareGiver product) should provide updated information during the Covid-19 pandemic so that their clients and clients’ families will recognize that they are staying on top of the situation. This might only be general information regarding what’s known about the virus or the disease it causes, or this could relate to best practices for hygiene and social contact, or it could explain current recommendations on some specific point. It might include the current status of local stay-at-home orders or non-essential business closures. Or, for some businesses, this might mean very specific information about steps they’re taking in their facility or how they’re making sure that individual residents are coping with new and unusual conditions.
To a lesser extent, we can see how attorneys and law firms could also benefit from generating focused new content. When we discussed this a month ago, we were somewhat skeptical of how financial services firms could do the same, but since then we have been swayed by good arguments and good content: these businesses also can provide a benefit to their customers and to the public by producing focused articles addressing specific questions and concerns.
Those are all positive actions and any firm with a careful, solid plan will be able to improve the perception of its expertise in its business area by taking them.
We’ve reached the point where the discussion turns to the negative.
We’ve seen an amazing uptick in the effort by a number of firms to leverage fear and uncertainty in an attempt to generate new business. We’ve also seen an increase in efforts by advertising and marketing firms to lure clients into questionable strategies by trying to convince them that using dubious techniques will bring a benefit to them.
While it’s true that we’ve seen all forms of crass ads and marketing campaigns, in all media, for all categories of products and services, we’ll limit ourselves to those specialties to which we currently offer our services. Note that these are subjective observations, based only on what we’ve witnessed.
Healthcare, on the whole, has taken the high ground. At all levels, workers in these fields (and most institutions) are being praised for their heroic efforts, and that praise is deserved. There are problems that parts of the overall industry are going to have to deal with in the future, however. The biggest might be that care homes of all kinds will need to rise above the perception that the average facility—nursing home, assisted living, hospice, veterans home, etc.—is poorly run, unsafe, overcrowded, underpays and overworks its staff, mistreats its clients, and lies to its clients’ families. None of those assertions are true for most facilities, but these are the kinds of things that all facilities are going to need to prove don’t apply to them. No one should like the fact that they will have to defend themselves against accusations like this, but it is the unfortunate state of things.
When it comes to law firms, we have already noticed ads from firms that are fishing for business by raising the spectres of malpractice or wrongful death related to Covid-19. These are serious issues, and we have no doubt that there will be many such cases in the courts in the near future—and our suspicion is that many plaintiffs will succeed. Our concern is that promoting this kind of service needs to be done carefully and, whenever possible, with compassion and empathy. We fully understand that waiting a week to put out an ad for this type of service might lose clients to those who advertise today. A firm might feel it needs to run those ads, and to run them now. But that doesn’t mean that any old ad will do. We’ve noticed some ads that are little more than the same ads we’ve seen in the past for car crashes, medical errors, industrial exposures, and class action drug cases. In the middle of a pandemic, that’s not good enough. Your approach needs to show your potential clients that you understand this crisis is different and unique. You need to make it clear that you recognize this is a new and complex situation, one that’s still unfolding, with many unknown challenges still to be faced. But you also need to relay to those potential clients that your firm is more capable than others when it comes to discovering what those challenges are—and in overcoming them. That’s the kind of message a client needs to hear, not some boilerplate personal injury claim spiel that’s been hastily modified to mention the pandemic.
In financial services, there are also many real and serious concerns for clients, and firms seem to have caught up to that challenge. In the early weeks, however, the most out-of-touch content seemed to originate from this industry. Firms seemed to be churning out material designed not to reassure clients, but instead to increase their anxiety. Some firms seemed to be suffering worse panic themselves than the clients they were hoping to soothe.
That month or more of near hysterical material passed, and more level-headed and responsible content has returned to prominence. Over the past week or two we have encountered an uptick in financial services content that is both informative and well targeted. Not all of this material has become responsible, though. In fact, a subset of content seems to have ratcheted up the fear mongering, while some others have turned to other questionable tactics.
Take for example what seems to us one of the most crass pitches. It appears to have been written by individuals deep inside cocoons of privilege, targeted at other individuals in even thicker cocoons. You might have seen some of these: “Where to invest $1 Million right now?” is a representative heading.
As a generation of Internet users would note: “you’re doing it wrong.” This strategy might pay off for a firm; it might even be a good strategy—if a firm is targeting the right audience in the right way. The problem is that if people like us are seeing these ads then they haven’t been targeted properly. They’re reaching people with far fewer resources and very probably far different opinions and experiences than those who can respond to a “where should I put this million dollars?” query. That audience might not look kindly on this business in the future, especially if it remembers that firm for trying to leverage the economic aspects of a pandemic crisis to enrich others, or to enrich itself through fees and commissions on potentially exploitative investments. This is not a good image to cultivate.
At Waltham WordWorks, we always take the high road and recommend that our clients do the same. When you need responsible content to highlight the character of your firm, contact us to discuss how we can help.
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