The post-COVID19 business of people. With people. For people.
By: Frederico Roberto
Tags: Corona, Covid-19

It’s time to take care of business. I don’t mean it in the ‘mob’ way. “Take care” doesn’t come with a gun pointed at anyone’s head at the moment. Quite plainly, care means care right now.

We’ve to care about our businesses. Our teams. Our people. Our clients and our clients’ businesses. We’ve been hearing every specialist, from every industry and expertise, claiming “it’s in times of crisis that one should invest”.

And ‘invest’ doesn’t mean bulking up structures, teams and install tighter processes to ‘not let anything slip’. Rather, it means looking for solutions both financial and creative ones.

“Quite plainly, care means care right now.”

We’re witnessing, first-hand and out in the open, how fat big agencies are/were. All trims included. But the problem — in this COVID-19 time — isn’t the size of the teams or the ridiculous number of people, from the most junior to the most senior, that serve an account. The problem is what the big holding groups and the big networks expect to still make the same level of profit and keep every single shareholder happy, the same way as foreseen in early 2020. Nope. Not happening. Profit — and not just the financial one — will come in the form of new ways of working, new solutions, services and products that agencies and other companies alike, have now the opportunity (the responsibility, even!) to present to their partners. It’s a looooooooong road ahead of all of us, but resiliency is the commanding shout at the moment and anything other than that it’s an easy fix, without proper vision.

And if we think that CEOs giving up their whole yearly salary — or sometimes merely taking a temporary pay cut — is the answer as one of those easy-fix measures, allow me to remind you that CEOs and Chairmen salaries are merely a drop in the ocean when compared with their yearly bonuses. So…yeah. That’s cute. But true care means sacrifice. The selfless kind. And if two months everyone was talking about purpose, now is the time to show. Purpose, frankly, comes out of one’s pocket. Back in the day, purpose meant “do the right thing”. That’s it. Can’t get any more obvious than that. Do the right thing.

[…]resiliency is the commanding shout at the moment and anything other than that it’s an easy fix, without proper vision.

Now, don’t get me wrong. I’m a believer in high-performance environments and people. And if something’s or someone’s not working then we also need to take care of it. Is it training? Is it mentorship? Is it managing expectations and the type of work given? If, after every effort applied, things aren’t working, then it needs to be addressed. But we have to do what’s right, first. Not what’s easy. Nothing during this pandemic it’s easy.

Because the same way audiences will reward brands and companies that will help them with good information, some sort of escape or entertainment, any positive output to cope with the months and years to come, agencies will also be rewarded — or at least they should — for their loyalty, their help and the fact they stood by. That’s how you forge long-lasting strategic partnerships. The same goes for the people in everyone’s agencies.

End of the day, it is about them.