Crisis and recovery

Andy Ball, MD at Balls2 Marketing, talks about how the team’s expertise has guided crisis comms for clients and planning for recovery.

The last few weeks have been the most difficult in living memory for most people in the UK, and industry has been hit hard. It feels like a lifetime ago that we were gathering for Manchester Pigs at the beginning of March, just as handshakes were being replaced with elbow bumps because of Covid-19.

Our team’s PR training in crisis communications has been invaluable from day dot. We set objectives of what we needed to deliver for each of our clients during the lockdown and this included clear, useful information and advice for their customers. It meant staying informed, with the updates from government and through our industry connections to get a clearer idea of what was going on throughout the whole supply chain and sharing this with our industry friends and directly with installers.

Tips for staying front-of-mind with customers, social media template posts for installers, directing businesses to the right financial support they could access from government, links to helpful webinars and contacts from legal, finance and HR experts – we’ve been working alongside trade fabricators to give installers a comprehensive support package to help them.

Now, as we are hopefully nearing a lockdown lift, the hard work is far from over. We have been busy, along with our partners, planning to help installers get back to fitting, because that’s how the whole supply chain will recover.

From the work that Certass has done with government to deliver clear guidance on how to work safely in people’s homes after lockdown and creating the documents to deliver this guidance, to special deals on remote selling, online design and quoting software, we’ve clubbed together to help them get back to work.

It’s likely that the way we all work will be very different from now on, but businesses who adapt and embrace the tools available to them have the best chance of getting back to ‘normal’ – whatever that may be.