The world needs this from your brand right now

I have been inundated recently with invitations to join webinars offering guidance on how brands should behave in the new reality created by the coronavirus crisis.

Show empathy and offer support — those seem to be the primary pieces of guidance in all these sessions. Which explains why we all have email boxes brimming with basically the same message from every brand we have had even the slightest interaction with in the past:

“We’re here for you.”

Hey, it’s solid advice. Yet woefully inadequate if we stop there. After all, we have more to offer than we may realize. (And let’s face it. If we can’t figure out that we need to show empathy and offer support in these times, then we have bigger problems.)

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What do you mean by we have more to offer?

Here’s the thing that’s easy to miss. Our brands’ most valuable offering is hope.

That’s right. Hope. Not the features we like to talk about. Not even the benefits that we tout. We may get people’s attention with those things. But it is hope that will make us beloved.

So how does a brand offer hope? It starts by understanding the deeper impact your brand…