The COVID-19 outbreak complicated the lives of essentially every industry, including public relations. Our PR agency in New York was certainly affected by the global coronavirus pandemic and we had to make immediate changes to adapt to this new world. Some of those adaptions including how we work with the media, but also how we handle our own day-to-day workflow as a team.
Learn more about how COVID changed the landscape of our PR firm and how we’ve created “a new normal” during the pandemic.
Working Remotely
Working from home has become the status quo for most businesses, and public relations is no different. While it was initially an adjustment to turn our homes into a functional workspace, we’ve made the best out of a difficult situation. We even found that working from a remote setting didn’t negatively impact our team’s workflow or motivation. In fact, we decided not to renew the lease with our NYC office building, allowing the entire Pace PR crew to be entirely remote moving forward. Our in-person meetings have been replaced by Zoom, including office happy hours and even our Roaring 20’s themed holiday party.
See Related Post: 5 Reasons Why Publicists Should Return to the Office
Adjustments for Pitches
Another shift on the PR landscape was the way we communicate with the media. We had to adjust our pitches, tactics and overall tone to fit with the current situation we have all been facing. This included leveraging our clients for any new perspective or expertise they could lend regarding various aspects of COVID-19, and posing our pitches in a way that would interest a journalist or producer during a time when the current media cycle was overflowing with coronavirus coverage.
Virtual Interviews
A year ago, a media guru might have never thought twice about conducting an interview via webcam. A virtual interview would have seemed unthinkable. Yet today, video chat has become a lifeline to the media and has allowed producers and journalists to still do their jobs. We now prepare our clients to speak on live television directly from their own homes, as opposed to going to the news station in person.
For the PR world, this was a positive aspect of the pandemic, as we can now get our clients booked on TV segments that we may not have otherwise been able to attain if our clients were not local and were unable to travel.
This also includes job interviews! We’ve recently hired a new member to join the Pace PR team, and considering we were all socially distanced, the entire interview process was conducted from a remote setting. Companies nationwide are finding themselves in the same boat, where they need to conduct interviews with potential candidates via Zoom, and even ship equipment – such as a laptop and monitor – for these new hires to start their new job remotely.
Social Gatherings & Media Events
For PR professionals, a huge aspect of what we do on a daily basis revolves around in-person gatherings. They range anywhere from special events for our clients, press conferences with the media, or launch parties for the general public. Since these in-person events were no longer an option, the Pace PR team needed to get creative and adapt to the unique situation. This meant holding more virtual events, becoming more active on social media and highlighting the ever-growing importance to our clients of their e-newsletters and blogs.
Get in Touch with Pace PR Today!
These are just a few of the changes we’ve had to make during the pandemic as a PR firm in NYC. With the world completely changed from COVID-19, we’ve had to shift the way we work with the media, how we work with our clients, and even how we work as a team internally. If you’re interested in learning about how PR can help you during these unprecedented times, please get in touch with Pace Public Relations. We would love to help your business and brand navigate these uncharted waters.