The World Health Organization (WHO) classified the spread of COVID-19 as a pandemic in March 2020.
This event highlighted that we currently live in a VUCA(H) world. The acronym consists of those traits that best characterize our new reality: Volatility, Uncertainty, Complexity, Ambiguity, and Hyper-connectivity.
In 2020 and in the first half of 2021, the words pandemic, confinement and group immunity took the media spotlight. Public Health jargon entered our everyday lives. However, companies started to adapt other words, like concern, resilience and adaptation. This showcases that the last year and a half, was a time period of learning and transition.
Unthinkable Challenges
Only a few companies, if any, had considered the prospect of a global pandemic in their strategic plans. For many this event was unexpected, for others it was predictable, but not easily resolvable. It forced nations, markets, organizations, families and individuals to redefine their routines. Therefore, to rethink their whole purpose.
The priority for companies is the survival of their business. At the present, their most important goal was to ensure the sustainability of their operation. Companies had to guarantee jobs, and needed to show commitment towards their suppliers in order to stay afloat. All the while they were trying to adapt to a new global environment. While on the other hand, they had to plan for the future, so that this scenario would not repeat itself. Proactive response plans have to be a part of every company’s strategy.
Our current present today presents new challenges. Namely in terms of managing relationships with customers and other stakeholders, as well as how organizations contribute in helping society. We also need to take a thorough look at the fabric of business future to make it future proof. Because we have to improve confidence, implementation capacity and focus. The feeling of resilience and transformation can spill over to companies, helping customers, consumers and society in general to overcome the present situation.
Problems for Exporting
For companies with a focus on exports, we know that the phenomena of valuing the offer produced in their respective countries is understood as a way of showing a level of quality and innovation that rivals that of other geographies. In some sectors of activity, or better, in some market niches, the “made in” strategies have worked as a lever for promotion across borders. However, the pandemic has brought a more attentive public, which values trends associated with local production and connected to the “land”, it privileges an offer seen as more genuine and the dynamization of what it understands as “its own”. Consumers today value their country’s brands more and may even be willing to pay more for products because they originate in their own territory.
Given this scenario, the COVID-19 pandemic, the need arose to understand how the role of Communication is perceived in managing the relationship with the stakeholders of national B2B companies with a focus on exports. The importance of Strategic Communication and PR in the creation of trusting relationships is decisive.