This pandemic has definitely brought out the best and worst in companies. We have seen some thrive and many fall but the overriding truth becoming apparent is that, either way, your levels of success have never been more indebted to digital than they are now. SEO may have seemed like a luxury; now it is a necessity. For a while, your website was very literally your only shop window, (I will definitely continue to buy beer directly from the brewery) and if the reports are to be believed, it may well be again. As a result, the demand for new digital roles has shot through the roof.

The hashtag #Opentowork has taken over social media and people with vast experience in certain sectors are applying for jobs in areas that are new to them and that they have zero experience in. The question is… is experience necessary? What about the benefits of starting someone off with a blank slate? No hang-ups? Training them from the ground up without the bleed-through of previous bad habits? Of course, if you have studied 10 years at Imperial to become a surgeon it’s probably best that you don’t wade into an operating theatre, but life-threatening circumstances aside, a fresh pair of eyes can be a benefit (although a few of us did our study on the sofa medical degree at Grey Sloan Memorial Hospital so we do know a thing or two). It’s a tricky tight-rope to walk but there are definitely jobs that you might not consider upon first glance, that you could already have the base skill-set for.

Business Development is one of these. When we put out a new job role on LinkedIn for a Business Development Manager we had 200 responses in 48 hours, ranging from the wildly experienced to the graduate. As a relatively small company that’s an incredible response, and we decided that we would not take our responsibility to these people lightly. Typically, a filtration process would occur; looking through candidates LinkedIn profiles and culling those that don’t fit the job description right away, the joys of digital! Unfortunately, you can’t understand the complexity of a real-life human being via a profile.

We sat down and thought about how to go about this and decided to not solely focus on efficiency but instead to put the people first and give everyone an equal opportunity… all 200 applicants. For inspiration, we turned to every teen adventure movie ever made; a series of tests, hoops and obstacles.

*Cue intro music and action montage*

We got each applicant to send us 100 words about why they would fit the role, a one-minute voice clip speaking about their interests outside work and asked them to cc: Sam, my co-managing partner, into the email. We worked out that if each one of us (the two directors) took 100 applicants we could make sure everybody could be seen. It made us realise even further that whilst there’s a lot of good coming from the digital revolution, it’s also incredibly important to remember that behind every profile there is a human, who’s trying to feed themselves. Unlike robots we need food.

It’s been a great experience so far and we would highly recommend that when you next have a job opening if you have the ability to do so, consider everyone. You never know what skills someone might bring in. I am glad to say we have found the most brilliant people to come and work with us. So much so, we’re looking to potentially create an extra role.

There are people out there, asking for a chance, a new start. It’s about investing in the process because if this pandemic has taught us one thing, it is that we’re all unique in our own individualistic ways but we’re all living with some pretty crappy circumstances right now and sometimes all we need is a chance to prove our worth.

Biz Dev Insights into the Digital Pandemic

The pandemic has shown how much work there still is to do within the digital arena. As a Business Development Agency we’re seeing global brands trying to fend off the challenger brands and in turn, the challenger brands live or die with regards to how much risk they’re willing to put into their customer engagement and marketing.

Digital transformation is much further behind than we originally thought, in fact, it is eye-opening. Connecting your workforce to Teams or Zoom isn’t where you should be as a £20 million turnover company let alone £2 billion. We are engaging with companies that have been trying to implement a digital communication framework for eight years, yet when the pandemic appears, so does the huge gulf in digitalisation from where they are to where they should be. Needless to say, on this occasion, it took only eight days to get past the red tape, it wasn’t the CIO, it was the pandemic which has brought these companies into the 21st century. We may be in a crisis but we’re seeing that global brand leaders are really showing their worth by using agencies that have the ability to adapt to this situation and create imaginative content that connects with their audience. From Patient-Centricity to Customer Engagement and User Pathways, these buzzwords dominate the conversations we have with Novartis, AB Foods, Vodafone, General Mills, LG and AstraZeneca, but it boils down to one thing: it’s all about the customer.

We’re seeing communal office workspaces that have been taking the money off new start-ups in the promise of beer at lunch crumble. There is a whole new generation of workforce who really can be left to their own devices (to some degree) and the new era of WFH coming to the forefront of everyone’s lips. Why should I commute into London again when I can sit in my garden in my Zoom shirt? “Maybe we don’t need all the offices that we currently have around the world”, Mondelez’s Dirk van de Put recently said. Maybe he doesn’t, only time will tell, but for now, the virus isn’t going away, small start-ups are still forking out thousands a month on the office space and that team of ten won’t forget that in a hurry once their contract expires. What is the ‘new norm’? I don’t think anyone really knows quite yet, we’re still figuring that out.

It’s essential to keep working on a long-term strategy. The only way for companies to get through this is to have a pipeline of activity that’s shifting and adapting to its surroundings. The project you were promised before lockdown most certainly won’t be on the table now, the funding has moved to another pot but there’s every chance you could still be in with a chance. It’s about grabbing that opportunity with both hands and going that extra mile by truly building relationships; not just practicing your smile in the mirror. People buy from people and now that I can see your dog, I like you that much more, I like dogs too.

I’ve been speaking to a lot of people over the last few weeks, from business owners to global brand leaders. Some have adapted and some are still adapting to the pandemic but the one thing they all have in common is that it’s not only their professional lives that have shifted and been affected but their personal ones as well. Time with family is definitely time well spent, I’m spending more time with my wife and daughter than ever before and it comes with glorious highs and toddler tantrum lows.

People are connecting on a level that they never have before and that’s beautiful, that’s something within the communications industry we need to focus on.

The world is still rotating. People are waking when the sun rises and sleeping when it sets, and businesses are still functioning. It’s our responsibility to support the ones that aren’t or cannot, but how? There have been many acts of kindness on a personal level, especially helping those frontline workers who need it now more than ever. But how do we help the small businesses and agencies that have already suffered? For them, there is no hope. How do we help them and their business owners recover?

Digital has become king, now more than ever before. The fact of the matter is, if someone is not proficient, then they need to partner up with someone who is, or learn and learn quick. This is less of a problem, but actually an important step in the right direction. I’ve been listening to a lot of brands say that the digital elements they’ve been trying to implement within their company for years have been cleared within 8 days. This will naturally help customer engagement to an unprecedented level but it needs to be done right.

Marketing and communications during this time couldn’t be more important for brands. Making sure that they can be heard above the noise without shoving it into people’s faces will be the talking point of most creative agencies and it’s up to them to step up to the mark.

Brands haven’t cut their marketing budgets, I’ve only heard of one brand that’s done that, Coca-Cola, for 6 months, why? Because everyone is drinking it anyway, a saving of just over £3 billion. For the rest of the brands, they need and must, assure their customers that everything is running as normal; you can still order their products and they’re even throwing in free delivery too. Budgets have not been cut, the mindset has, so in order to grow your agency, your mindset must as well.

These past few weeks talking to brand leaders has been reassuring, they want those conversations. Now more than ever they want the solutions to their problems. How do they engage? What must they build? Who can help? Which direction is the right direction for the brand in the long term? How can we collaborate? How can we keep swimming? It is time to start those conversations, plant the seeds for long term growth, build relationships as well as the foundations for clients to come. It’s time to shift focus, innovate and savour that family time.

We’ve started something called The Carbon Clean Up, where our employees and their friends go to beaches around the British Isles – we pay for the expenses, they give their time and we clean up beach by beach.

www.keepbritaintidy.org

When we first set up Carbon Global we said that we wanted to make sure we gave back by having a charitable arm to the agency and we thought, what better way to give than to make your own projects. And so #CarbonCleanUp was born. The idea is that we travel to coastlines in the UK and spend the day cleaning up the beaches.

On Tuesday 21st May 2019 we all drove to #Southend. The sun was shining and this was the first clean-up of many more to come.