So, I’ve been researching as of late how the pandemic has affected the reputations of companies and brands. Almost all of the studies I’ve read thus far raise the issue of “mission”.
But what mission?
The opening of Community by Nasscom Insights emphasizes a company’s mission must be in line with society’s expectations and values. When it comes how we fulfil that mission, two behaviours in particular stand out: actively aiding the fight against Coronavirus, and developing and implementing new policies for assuring both public and employee health.
Another common theme across all of these studies is “human touch”. They stress how important empathy is, and how those who know how to empathise will be duly rewarded. This of course, comes along with companies and brand names alike recommending that we use social media to tune society and consumers into “social listening”.
Research published by RepTrak specifically asks us to look at the quality of communication performance, underlining that everyone expects communication that is transparent, participatory, bilateral, sincere, well-managed, and timely. In this sense, you could say that “companies and brands are able to create opportunity out of the pandemic to bolster their reputation”.
Is this all just science fiction – or reality?
Covid-19 has re-designed global life from scratch.
Humanity is living through an unprecedented period. We’ve all become primary school students who’ve yet to celebrate reading day. We’re all are questioning how this new order works upon a theatre stage where science fiction and real-life experience bicker with one another.
Given that none of us know exactly what measures we ought to take, we’re unable to find comfort in futurist scenarios. We’ve lost all our hope for returning to normal. The whole notion of normalization is meaningless even.
Wearing masks day in and day out has become a joke!
Curfews and lockdowns lead measures that make us cry ‘you gotta be kidding me!’
Only science fiction screenwriters could dream up closing borders and restricting travel.
Sports matches, concerts, festivals and gatherings—the backbone of socialization—have virtually vanished and won’t making a comeback anytime soon.
Many other details of “ordinary” life, too, have become mundane players in the game of uncertainty.
What Is Normal Anyways? Should Positive Make Us Happy?
Over the past 20 years, Covid has tested our level of resistance when it comes to public life. One might even argue that Covid-19 had never lost its edge.
It refuses to surrender…
We don’t even know how it infects us; all we can do is guess.
It’s left science unable to find a cure.
It doesn’t tell you when it is going to take next step.
It’s as though to whom, when, where, and how it does what it does depends entirely on what mood it happens to be in.
It’s trying to tell us “snap out of it!”
The words “normal” and “positive” have gained new definitions when we communicate now. However, this global trauma has also reunited with “solidarity, transparency, conscience, and mutual help”.
Where is the Real Virus?
It’s time wake up and face the reality!
The real virus lies within us—in our brains, our hearts, our thoughts…
It makes our decisions for us…
It signs our contracts for us…
It rules our court cases for us, forking out injustice in the name of justice …
It drives our construction equipment for us, destroying tens of thousands of trees in search of gold.
It is within batons, water cannons, and pepper spray we aim at anyone who takes to the streets to voice their desire for a humane life…
The virus inside all of us—and that has stared down Covid—wears multiple guises:
The farms that we’ve destroyed…
The forest fires that we’ve extinguish with our tears…
The nuclear waste we’ve buried (out of sight, out of mind) …
Women, children, and infants, all of whose lives and hopes have ended in refugee boats caught in raging seas…
All that makes life uninhabitable… And we have to foot the bill with global warming: Corona doesn’t stand a chance against it.
Babies and children who die every 40 seconds before they reach the age of five due to preventable diseases and unjust wealth distribution—the world’s richest thirty-two billionaires are worth the total income of half the world’s population.
Drug addiction virus—man slaves in the face of money and power…
Bribery virus—opening the door for the moral destruction of societies…
The virus of exploitation of religion—bonding spirituality to personal ambitions…
Scientific immorality virus—and scientific compliance with nicotine, toxic pesticides, and anything else that harms human beings and nature…
The virus of poor-quality politics and politicians—who pull society back rather than push it forward, turn people on one another, and impoverish them while they get richer…
The love, tolerance, and the sincerity virus could not be produced
Our brains created the “consumption virus” in the previous century. It soon transformed life into a society ruled over “mad men”. It wasn’t all that long ago when we used to topple over and clobber one another—and with just pennies in our pockets—all to buy laptops on “Black Fridays”.
Shortly thereafter, humanity contrived the technology virus.
The “thought virus” did its job well when we morphed into communities that got wrapped around social media’s finger. Even though those who tried to spruce up the lack of order ask themselves “what the hell they did”, the cacophony is the work of the “thought viruses”!
This virus wiggling about our brains has left of believing that “we are being watched”, that we lack any sense of “privacy” and our freedom winks at us from the windows of pawnshops. We’ve surrendered to gizmos that know our emotional states better than we do for the so-called development!
Man is incapable of creating the love, tolerance and sincerity virus.
It has yet to embrace a world that is as innocent as childhood.
It has yet to live in peace and friendship…
Carelessly shutting one’s eyes will forever remain a fantasy…
Man wants to aimlessly question reasons, and yet doesn’t know how to ask questions. No one has ever let it do so. The answer virus forbids it!
Maybe we will one day discover an effective Covid vaccine.
That said, there will never be vaccine that rids us of the evil virus that pegs our brain against the planet and humanity…
Life will continue to be an asylum seeker in a world of evil that we’ve created with our own hands!
Loveless…
Longing for peace…
We are dedicated to being people who have turned our backs on beauty, and who have gone through life never fully understanding the weight of our own problems in our laps!
(*) This article was published in the Autumn 2020 issue of the Turkish Ethics and Reputation Society’s IN Magazine.
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