Rallying a community together, while apart

Apr 25, 2020

Trozzolo PSA campaign calls on KC to do their part

In the first few days of March, we all had parades to attend, basketball teams to cheer for and family members to visit. On the 10th, no one could fathom canceling these plans, but by the end of the day on the 11th, the entire landscape had changed.

Statements released on Wednesday had quickly been changed by that next morning, and coast to coast, businesses were being shuttered by the hour. Employees from all industries retreated to their homes, laptops in tow. Home internet providers have probably never had such stress on their network.

In what felt like a matter of days, the coronavirus COVID-19 had wreaked havoc across the nation.

As communications professionals, we’ve been following guidelines closely. From a personal health directive, yes, but also how our government, financial institutions and health care experts have communicated the delicate situation to its stakeholders.

If a business were to come to us for counsel with the pandemic as their situation, where would we even start? Well, we’d try to define our audience, gather all of the information and identify what obstacles we’re facing. We’d bring that outside perspective we provide our current clients to position their businesses above the rest. We’d get super specific, conduct audience research and go full steam ahead.

But this is one of those rare times when we’re talking to everyone, everywhere, all the time. We truly don’t, and can’t, know everything about the situation, and even if we did, it could change the next time we check the news. Not that that’s an excuse, but this would be a long, broad creative brief, which we try to avoid 

The one thing we do know during this time of uncertainty is we can use our talents for the betterment of the community. It’s our duty as a local business, community members and as healthy individuals to help spread the important messages in Kansas City and beyond.

When we’re not providing advice for our clients on how to navigate the pandemic, our teams across the agency are collaborating on how to fight this war. We’re sharing stories of our personal experiences, critiquing other companies’ messaging and holding each other accountable. Out of these conversations have come engaging representations of the simplest and most important messages in our current situation.

Taking our personal drive to defeat this thing, we tapped some of our best assets – our diverse group of creative thinkers, our award-winning public relations strategists and our health care marketing expertise – to develop something great to help spread the word and help us get through this TOGETHER.

Our latest passion project (and crisis-processing tool, if we’re being honest) is an ongoing series of propaganda-style PSAs for the Kansas City community and beyond. With subtle, yet eye-catching, animation and a personal stake in the game, we’ve been using our free time to spread the word through social media (which has seen a major increase in usage, no surprise there).

We’ve been sorting through all of the information available to find the most important things that our family, neighbors, LinkedIn connections, estranged Facebook friends and Instagram stalkers need to know. From social distancing to proper sanitization technique, we just want everyone to take this thing seriously.

The Trozzolo team is grateful for continued workflow, supportive colleagues and good health. But in this time, we are especially grateful for the opportunity to use our talents and resources to support the community. If even one person sees our message, it can make a difference in the big picture.

That’s what we care about most. 

If we’re going to defeat this thing, we have to help each other. We have to hold each other accountable and spread the word with what we do best. It’s going to be longer and tougher than we want it to be. We’re going to get bored, anxious, scared, depressed, inconvenienced and tired of our normal lives being disrupted. But this is our new normal. At least for now. And for as long as it takes. We will beat this evil COVID-19 thing. We’ve always rallied together to do whatever it takes to defeat every evil at our doorstep. And we’ll do it again this time.

Together.

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