In its survey “The impact of Covid-19 on Brand PR and Marketing Communication”, which was conducted in cooperation with the global PR network Eurocom Worldwide, the Munich agency Schwartz Public Relations presents how marketing and PR experts perceive the current situation in their internal and external communication.
In external communication, Covid-19 topics are deliberately pitched
73 percent of the respondents stated that they consciously communicates Covid-19 topics in their external communication during the current situation. Of these 73 per cent, most of the respondents say that they embed Covid-19 topics into other corporate subjects. After all, almost 30 percent of all interviewees indicate that they consciously avoid Covid-19 content in their communication and instead place other PR stories more prominently.
Covid-19 makes businesses more digital and shows that communications content is selected with even greater care
On the question of what is changing in their field of work, almost all marketing and PR professionals confirmed that, as a result of the Covid-19 crisis, digitisation is generally taking on an even greater significance in their everyday work. These include home office options, the use of video calls and chats and digital events. According to the participants, these elements will continue to play a permanent, important role in their companies after Covid-19.
Marketing professionals continue to confirm that they want to take much greater care in both internal and external communication during the crisis. Particularly in the selection of topics, there is a greater sensitivity and a focus on the essentials.
Companies consider their internal communication to be well adapted to the current situation
More than half (61 percent) of the interviewed decision-makers evaluate the internal communication in their company as well adapted to the current situation. Only minor adjustments were required with regard to Covid-19. In contrast, six percent of those respondents who want to analyse and define their internal communication processes in a new way in order to be able to respond appropriately to the current situation. One third of all participants want to include crisis communication in their current communication portfolio.
Physical events still play an important role
The majority (54 percent) of the participating marketing and PR experts believe that physical events will continue to play a very important role in the future. Almost half of them expect offline events to make a comeback at least after the Covid-19 crisis. In contrast, almost a quarter (24 per cent) are of the opinion that physical events will gradually be replaced by new digital formats.
To the survey: The survey was imlemented via SurveyMonkey.com. Nearly 200 people took part in the survey. These are marketing and/or PR managers, experts and decision-makers from industrial and technology companies and from the agency environment. The survey was conducted between July and August 2020.