Public Relations Today

Never in recent history, probably not since World War II,  has there been such a turnabout in lifestyles choices and expectations, from the cost of that daily fix of coffee to lessened possibilities for home acquisition among young people to anticipation about living out one’s golden years with some degree of security.

As one who works in both lifestyles marketing and the housing market, I have altered my recommendations to clients radically, just since September. I’ve been giving them some “straight talk,” some of which they don’t want to hear.  I don’t have the answers to weathering a great storm, a perfect storm, but neither, it seems, do the great thinkers on finance and the economy. When I was taking all kinds of advice from investment consultants, I was always reminded by friends that nobody really knows anything for sure and that I should go with my own intuition.

For more than a year, the economy was already slowing down, certainly in housing, but the economic meltdown and the bailout of Wall Street has business owners and home sellers alike gripped with fear while aching for that note of hope that things will get better sooner, rather than later. It may be later.

So what do we do in the meantime?  The world’s pundits would say that we prepare for the worst, but hope for (and work toward) the best.  Or, those more spiritually oriented would be advised to “pray to God, but row toward shore.”  The one quote I’m frequently using today is that of Franklin Delano Roosevelt that “the only thing we have to fear is fear itself.”  The reason I put emphasis on the last quote is that fear mars our judgment and stifles our creativity in searching for ways to do things differently.

You own a restaurant that has suddenly lost a major percentage of its customer base? To identify the opportunities for getting old and new customers alike to choose you over the competition, creativity must be unfettered by fear. Selling a home that can’t find a buyer? Think about price, like everyone else is, think about staging, think about guerilla marketing. 

But while considering these things,  how do we keep fear at bay? It’s all about “going within,” while thinking universally. Remember how resilient the human spirit is, especially among Americans living in a great country, no matter the economic turmoil with which we’re surrounded today. As a nation and as individuals, we’ve weathered incredible odds just to win our freedom. Certainly we will survive an economic crisis…and eventually move forward again.