What can I tell you? We are in unknowable territory. We have to assume that shortly we will follow Spain, France, Belgium and Italy in closing all bars and restaurants (rather than merely suggesting people avoid them – a point of difference perhaps more obvious to politicians than the rest of us).
So where does that leave us?
I can tell you that I am scrambling to commission features that play up home cooking on a budget: what do to with a cheap can of tomatoes, the storecupboard essentials that will pep up your cooking. With shoots being cancelled by the hour, I’m also desperate for feature ideas that come as a self-contained package, ie anything that includes decent photography.
But also I’m looking for a bit of escapism too, and I don’t think that’s a bad direction for PR to go in too. Not in sending out platitudes about how your client values the health of its staff and customers above all else – hopefully we can take that as a given – but in trying to highlight a world beyond the immediate headlines.
We are, after all, in this together (but hopefully not for as long as some of the media are currently reporting). Let’s try to stay as positive as possible.
Some of my favourite emails this week have been ones that blithely ignore Covid 19, that try to give the impression that it’s business as usual.
Let’s hope that before too long it will be.
