Communicating in Era of George Floyd

A few weeks ago many Americans woke up with a seeming epiphany of how race relations really work in the U.S., which contrasted their understanding of that just a few weeks prior. It is clear that George Floyd’s killing at the hands of police officers laid bare scars that had never been healed and resurfaced issues being brushed under the rug on a daily basis. It left a country clamoring for equal justice, an end to police brutality, a sense of fairness and just plain decency for all Black people. It also had the effect of making many non-minorities understand something that had not been readily apparent to many of them: there are different American realities depending on your race.

One of the most notable aspects of this movement has been its decidedly integrated nature, with Blacks, Whites, Asians and Latinos all taking to the streets to demand justice and change.

Why now? Many reasons have been posited. Integration gains begun in the 50s and 60s have forced us together and to get to know one another. Maybe we just needed the empathy piece to kick in. Or maybe Covid-19 has kept us cooped up so long, its given us more time to be reflective and appreciate our fellow citizens and time to hit the streets in defense of what is right. Perhaps its because the Gen X and the post-boomer generations are more diverse than older generations and younger whites are more liberal than their elders on matters of racial justice.

Its probably all of the above. But one thing is for sure. The San Andres fault of the enduring racial divide in United States has shifted abruptly, and things will never realign the way they were before. As municipalities take a fresh look at their relationship with their police departments and institutionalized social inequities, corporations and other organizations are struggling to figure out how to navigate and communicate in this new normal.

Their consumers might be physically the same, but many are changed individuals. These political and social events that people are experiencing now, especially the youth, will be incredibly influential in shaping their beliefs and identity now, in the near future and throughout their entire lifetime.

This same force majeure is driving the need for organizations to take strong stances on social issues that they may previously have never considered — even those seemingly irrelevant to their core business.

Consumers and non-profit supporters don’t see a meaningful separation between the operation of a company and the social stance it takes. In some ways, as was fatefully projected in the Citizens United case, people increasingly see corporations as responsible for conducting their business ethically, morally and for having social impact. Organizations are seen as entities who are expected to let their views on a range of issues be known.

This is especially true with brands that borrow heavily from minority culture and target ethnic consumers. These entities have a responsibility to push for change for their “constituents”, along multiple fronts: hiring, supporting, promoting, protecting, supporting.

Today and most acutely in the post George Floyd awakened America, taking a stance as a whole brand on divisive issues is a better choice than staying silent.

As the personal realignments between individuals and the readjustment that organizations have to make to their customers becomes clearer, businesses will need to walk the walk and talk the talk. They will have to communicate all of this more effectively or pay the price of complacency: diminished sales, reduced shareholder value, shuttered doors, tattered brands, withered fortunes and fundraising.

These are definitely uncertain times and uncertainty looks like the new norm for the forseable future. The communication has to be more inclusive, diverse, and compelling.

All of us, including business and civic leaders business leaders will have to grow more comfortable with that uncertainty.

Related posts:

Whether you deploy to the cloud or on-prem, one of the biggest challenges of a microservice or distributed architecture is monitoring. Zipkin is a distributed tracing system that can help to solve…

We have been helping small and large organizations achieve application resilience as painlessly as possible. In fact, we have been saying you could get your entire cloud application environment…

I took the quiz knowing that I definitely use my phone a lot. But the results told me I should see a psychiatrist about my addiction to technology. I don’t think my dependence on my phone is a huge…