How are you doing?
Lately, I’ve been filled with anxiety.
Beyond my well-being, I’m concerned for my family, friends and community.
And for my country.
In health and financial terms, the impact of COVID in my New York City neighborhood continues to be very real!
This past weekend, the New York City Halloween Parade was cancelled.
And the message of the Day of the Dead hits close to home. This Mexican holiday celebrates people, both living and dead.
The coronavirus continues to move across the US, (Map of weekly changes in the number of COVID cases via National Geographic.)
Across the US, this fast-spreading virus continues to infect and kill more people at increasingly higher rates.
In addition, COVID leaves many survivors with lasting health challenges. Yet, these personal health and financial costs remain undercounted.
These losses break my heart.
Even worse, COVID has taken and continues to exact a major physical and emotional toll on frontline workers. This includes doctors, nurses and others who work in hospitals and related facilities.
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I lived in New York City during 9/11 and its aftermath without a job after the dotcom bust. No one was hiring marketers.
So I took the jobs I could get, namely teaching at NYU and writing for ClickZ. While my income was less than my overhead, I was thankful for these jobs. Together they created the foundation for my Actionable Marketing Guide business.
Need help with your job search?
- How to Reposition Your Personal Brand For The Job Market
- Use these 5 Tips to Get Your Job Search On Track
Currently, the US loses to COVID the equivalent of 9/11 deaths every 3 days. And each time, an entire family has an emotional (and sometimes financial) hole that never closes.
The other stress in my life is the US election.
Last week my husband and I went downtown to vote at the New York City Board of Elections on lower Broadway. Across the street the bronze statue of the Wall Street bull stood guard over the nerve center of business.
And a few blocks further south at the southern edge of Battery Park, you can see the Statue of Liberty. She watches over New York Harbor bearing the inscription:
“Give me your tired, your poor, Your huddled masses yearning to breathe free.”
I’m amazed and proud of the number of people who’ve exercised their right to vote this year.
Yet in the US, the home and defender of democracy around the world, many states limit voting rights and access. As a woman, I know the Founding Fathers chose not to give every citizen the right to vote.
BUT these wrongs need to be righted and the unfair laws must be amended!
Actionable Leadership and Marketing Tip:
- Have a higher social purpose aligned with your business. And be inclusive.
In addition, the US election faces interference from foreign players and misinformation from divisive groups. They spread on social media platforms, most notably Facebook.
And this activity has real implications for your marketing! Since Edelman’s Trust Barometer 2020 revealed that people don’t trust the media. Even worse, 72% of people globally hold advertisers responsible for fake news!
Actionable Marketing Tips:
- Assess the media platforms and context of your advertising for trustworthiness. When I ran digital advertising campaigns at The Economist, I pulled ads from sites that ran them near unacceptable content.
- Factcheck your content and use attribution where appropriate. 22% of B2B Content Marketers use fact checking tools and/or procedures according to 2021 CMI/MP research. And Orbit Media’s 2020 Blogging Survey found that 1 in 3 bloggers worked with an editor and 1
in 10 used more than 1 editor!
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- 2020 Blogging Research: What You Can Do To Improve Your Results (Includes charts and examples!)
The basis for my hope and yours:
Senator John Mc Cain (1936 – 2018)
Last November, my husband and I visited the Hanoi Hilton in Vietnam. McCain was a prisoner of war (aka: POW) there from October 26, 1967, until his release on March 14, 1973, with 108 other prisoners. It was a humbling experience to view such extreme and terrible forms of torture.
McCain refused preferential treatment and early release (even when his father became commander of U.S. forces in Vietnam.) He also refused meetings with anti-war groups seeking peace, and other forms of propaganda for the US and/or the North Vietnamese.
Why?
Because the military Code of Conduct for POWs states: “I will accept neither parole nor special favors from the enemy.”
BTW: Did you know that Jay Baer, author of Youtility, started his marketing career working for John McCain’s
political campaigns! (As I’ve said before, politics and marketing are similar.)
At the Hanoi Hilton, my soul was lifted by the personal and inner strength of men like McCain and James Stockdale (Ross Perot’s Vice Presidential candidate in 1992.)
Apply their inner strength to your situation:
“You must never confuse faith that you will prevail in the end—which you can never afford to lose—with the discipline to confront the most brutal facts of your current reality, whatever they might be.” – James
Stockdale
So believe in the long-term and focus on the people you hold dear. Life may be hard now but you have the power within you to survive and thrive.
To show you the power of following this faith, my husband paid me the BEST compliment ever last week:
“There’s no one I’d rather spend a pandemic with than you!”
His words echoed those of the boss I admired most. Since he served as a foot soldier in Vietnam, his greatest compliment:
“I would choose to be in a foxhole with you.”
So, I challenge you to ask yourself:
Who would I choose to be in a foxhole with?
Actionable Leadership and Inner Strength Tips:
- Support your employees and community during difficult times. Offer them help in the form of health benefits, food and loans and/or grants to pay their bills. Because your employees expect this from your business.For example: Getty Images offered 10 grants of $2,000 each to artists in June 2020. Their goal was to support the creative community.
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For marketers:
The last days of the 2020 US Election yielded an attention-grabbing ad to encourage people to vote. Produced by the NAACP, it features actor Morgan Freeman.
This ad harkens back to this anti-war ad from President Lyndon Johnson’s 1964 campaign:
Actionable Marketing Tips:
- Use the constraints you face now to increase your creativity. In her Content Marketing World (aka: #CMWorld) keynote, Ann Handley shared great examples of how COVID brought out people’s creativity, like this example from the Getty Museum on Twitter.
Skip worrying about the 2020 US Election results because they’ll take time to count.
Instead attend MarketingProfs B2B Forum. It’s coming to a screen of your choice on Wednesday, November 4th and Thursday, November 5th.
RECOMMENDED READING:
Looking to improve your voice skills while having fun with the top Voice Influencers?
Then party with me at the Voice Den Party on Saturday, November 14th. It celebrates Dr. Teri Fisher’s 1000th consecutive Voice in Canada Flash Briefing! (BTW, Teri is the “Voice Doctor” for good reason!)
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Want to improve your Twitter Marketing?
Join me for Agorapulse’s Social Media Summit: Twitter on Wednesday, November 18th! BTW, did I mention that it’s free and that I’m presenting! So please register now so you don’t forget!
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Welcome new subscribers: Chaney, Julianna, Winni, A Trung, Kishore, Andrew, Sophie, Ishu, Faith, Katerina, Heather, Marco, Lee, Wendy, Ana, Jason and Kannen.
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Happy Marketing,
Heidi
P.S.: Want Heidi Cohen to contribute a quote or other commentary to your next article, presentation, video, research and/or book? Then hit reply to this email and ask.
P.P.S: Did you miss last week’s AMG Newsletter?
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- Seismic Content Marketing Shift (Note: This related article highlights with research how major global changes will have an impact on your marketing and your business more broadly.)
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