Possibilities After the Pandemic
Excerpts of the Keynote Address offered by David Gallagher via video conference at the World Communication Forum Association on April, 10 2020.
This is not a talk about prescriptions — I do not have remedies for any of our present crises. And it’s also not about predictions — I do not have relevant data to extrapolate or analyse, and I am wary of those who say they do.
This is a talk about possibilities. About opportunities to reconsider what we do, and how — but also why. I hope it will offer some context to the discussions that follow.
Many of you know Paul Holmes, an analyst and observer of our little industry for many years. In the past Paul and I have disagreed on small matters, but as we’ve grown older I find his observations almost always worth sharing. He recently wrote about four possibilities the current set of challenges may force us to deal with positively.
The first is restoring trust in objective media — a topic some of you will know is near and dear to my heart. As media advisors, I believe we have been far too complacent — or even complicit — in the destruction of objective news and professional journalism. We have watched the spread of disinformation, misinformation and fake news spread like, well, a virus. And we’ve acted like it’s not really our place to address it.
Well it is. I had planned to chair a conference for the PRCA on this topic before everything had to be postponed, but I hope we’ll revisit the topic in 2021.
The second, which is related, is valuing expert knowledge. Every single disaster movie starts with arrogant politicians ignoring a nerdy scientist. And then — wham — everything is either on fire or under water or reduced to a wasteland. Welcome to 2020, ladies and gentlemen. Our profession helped develop the whole idea of delivering complex information through knowledgeable, trustworthy experts. We stood by while experts became contemptible “elites” and this was a mistake. In addition to the pandemic, there’s now an Infodemic, which makes a bad situation much worse. I believe addressing it has to be a top priority for our community.
Third is making capitalism better. I know, we all said this after the 2008 financial crisis, too. And that last about a year before we went right back overleveraging and under-committing to everyone but the shareholders. Some progress was made last year when the Business Roundtable finally came to the conclusion that the purpose of must serve stakeholders other than the owners, and this year’s epic government gifts to industry will give us a chance to see how earnest we can be about our wider responsibilities. I have my doubts, to be honest, but we may not get another chance.
And fourth is the opportunity for companies and brands to demonstrate their true purpose, both during the crisis and in whatever comes next. There are dozens of stories of brands finding ways to show, not simply say, that they exist for a reason. My friend and Omnicom colleague John O’Brien, who has written a great book on this, The Power of Purpose, says that now is the moment for companies to connect with their communities through truthful, authentic human acts.
Incidentally, he and I are working on another project related to this and would welcome your suggestions for who is doing a good job of this — and who is not.
Another possibility arises with creativity. My friend Wendy Grossman is a lecturer at Boston University and a founder of a company called Creative Reframe, and she sees enormous potential for us to reignite our creative instincts as we look for ways to connect with each other and share our feelings. And she points out we see this everyday already — with TikTok videos, sidewalk paintings or nightly operettas sung from balconies in Madrid and Milan.
I like this possibility — a refurbishment of our creative juices — because I fear sometimes we as an industry are betting too heavily on data, analytics and technology. Even now, we get lost in the noise of infection rates, testing rates, mortality rates. They lose meaning. But music, art, stories — these are what connect us.
A sixth possibility arises with collaboration. In the early stages of the pandemic, we responded in our usual, self-interested ways. Agencies and consultancies were quick to point out why their model or approach or ownership structure would be proven to be the most robust, and frankly I found that a little depressing.
But just today in the UK, the PRCA has launched an online set of resources and free/confidential access to more than 60 expert professionals to help communications departments and consultancies work through this together, which is amazing — and thank you to those volunteer advisors. I am sure we will someday return to our competitive ways, but what if we could continue to collaborate so closely on common issues?
And I’ll bring this to an end by raising another possibility: humility.
But first, by humility, I mean accepting that this crisis (or this collection of crises) forces us to recognise the possibility that our assumptions about who we are and what we do may be no longer valid. Maybe they were never valid.
I keep hearing people say that this situation proves such-and-such political ideology, or economic system, or leadership style is “right” and the others “wrong.” I don’t know. Maybe.
But I have definitely recognised some weaknesses in myself as a result of the mirror this crisis puts in front of us, 24 hours a day. I’ve found a few strengths, too, but overall I know that I am already different, and will be more different as this develops, so it’s fair to say that some of my assumptions yesterday aren’t going to work tomorrow.
This point came home to me while listening to an amazing new podcast from a friend in London and sustainability expert, Ed Gillespie. It’s called The Great Humbling, which is fitting, and it examines this weird space we find ourselves in — too soon to make sense of it all, but moving so quickly it will be too late to assess it by the time it comes to a rest.
The show emerges from a quote by Milton Friedman: Only a crisis — actual or perceived — produces real change. When that crisis occurs, the actions that are taken depend on the ideas that are lying around.
So he and his co-host examine the stories or narratives that are lying around right now in an effort to make sense of something that can’t actually be comprehended at the moment. Some you will recognise, some seem novel — but all are plausible sources for future actions.
I was also confronted by the possibilities of humility with a long and beautiful essay, The Coronation, by Charles Eisenstein. He raises a lot of pretty profound ideas but one that sticks with me is the fact that viruses, like the one changing our world today, are also essential to evolution. Not just ours, but all life based on cells. We are laid low by the very force that inspires us. This is humbling to me.
Finally, I’ll say that one way to look at the pandemic is as a portal. Arundhati Roy wrote in last weekend’s Financial Times, “we can walk through it with our dead ideas. Or we can walk lightly, ready to imagine another world.” I don’t know what your dead ideas might be about your business or your career, but we all have some.
Let’s walk lightly, and try to imagine another world.
Thank you.
David Gallagher is a member of the Center’s Board of Advisors and is President, Growth and Development, International for Omnicom Public Relations Group
