REICH COMMUNICATIONS

What We Do: Even During Pandemic, Traffic Safety Matters

 

While our focus these days is on personal and community health, safety on the road remains an important issue.

Here's the latest newsletter from our client, The National Road Safety Foundation.  Even as we're staying safe at home, many of us still drive for essential shopping.  And once things begin opening up again, we'll be back on the roads and highways.

So... it's always time to be thinking of safety when we do get behind the wheel.

Click here to see the latest Road Buzz newsletter.

 

Nurses = Angels

In my thankfully limited experience with hospitals, I've always felt nurses were truly special people -- angels, guided by some inner force of mercy and caring. 

These past several week have proven that true a hundredfold.

Thank you to all the nurses and caregivers, today and every day.

... Jazz ...

Today is International Jazz Day. 

Jazz...America's classical music.

 

Quarantine Creativity

Even during the pandemic quarantine, my son Michael manages to be creative and use film to tell a heartwarming story with a possibly sinister ending.

His short film "Quarantine Dog - Good Boy" just won the Without Precedent 48-Hour Quarantine Film Festival.  Click here to read about it and see the 3-minute film starring my grandpup Martin.

Messaging During a Crisis -- A Challenge for PR

 

Advertising and public relations help drive business for most companies.  For many non-profit groups, like two that we represent, those marketing tools aren't about sales but more about their mission of getting important messages out.

During normal times. 

These are hardly normal times.

As the global focus now is, understandably, on the coronavirus pandemic, many businesses have changed their marketing efforts.  Instead of hard-sell messages, many companies are using advertising to maintain their brand visibility while saying to the public that "we're in this together" or "here's how we're trying to help" or "better times are ahead."

For those relying on public relations, it's a tougher challenge. Many reporters, editors and producers simply don't want to hear story pitches if they're not COVID-related.

For two of our clients, both in the non-profit sector, we're taking their messages and giving them legitimate relevance to the virus. It's working to get our messages out, even in the midst of the pandemic news.

For the Christophers, who annually honor the creators of outstanding books, films and TV programs, we're highlighting this year's winning books by framing the story as something we can do with all that extra free time as we shelter in place... read a good and inspiring book.

For The National Road Safety Foundation, we normally would be talking about distracted driving, since April is designated as national distracted driving month.  Our approach was to issue a release acknowledging that while most of us are driving less now, we still need to remember not to be distracted when we do drive to the superarket or drug store or to do other essential chores.   Taking that approach got us good traction and our story got good media pickup.

The key here...make your story relevant.  If you can't in these times, then wait.

   

 

Zissen Pesach

A happy Passover...

Hang In There

 

Week 3+ of quarantine for us here in New York.

Stay Safe!  Stay Inside!

Better days are ahead.    

 

 

   Cabo sunset

How the Government Can Help Us Trough the Financial Part of the Health Crisis

 

 

Even as the Senate is hammering out details of what the government’s financial stimulus package will look like, I offer my 2 cents…

No doubt, the shutdown will impact most of us.  For some – individuals and small businesses -- it will be a disaster from which they may never fully recover.  People now living on the edge will be pushed over the edge.  Some small businesses we frequent – restaurants, mom & pop retailers, personal service providers like our barbers and nail salons – may not be able to reopen, and they will be missed.  Some smaller entertainment and recreation providers like indie movie theaters and bowling alleys will fall by the wayside.

If the shutdown lasts more than a few weeks, our world may look different than it did last week or the week before.

I think the government should take steps to secure our economy and help individuals who need it most.  But I think it is wrong to give $50 billion to the airline industry and billions to the cruise industry.  Airlines are essential to our way of life, but the big airlines can weather this storm.  Perhaps they merit a smaller level of assistance – not outright handouts, but low or no-interest credit to keep them going.  No money for stock buy-backs and no money for big bonuses for top executives.  Any money they get should come with specific and strict stipulations to avoid unfair and greedy abuse.   

Smaller businesses should be given funds to help get them through, again with some stipulation that a major portion of the funds go to furloughed employees.  Owners should be allowed a portion to cover key expenses like rent to help them stay solvent so they can open again once we get past this.

A $1,200 or $2,400 payment to individuals will be welcomed by many, but if a shutdown extends for more than a few weeks, many hourly workers will be under water and may never fully get whole.  A more equitable assistance formula should be worked out.   

And now is the time to begin planning for once we get past this immediate crisis.  Now is the time for our government to start developing programs to repair our crumbling infrastructure and get serious about ending our dependence on fossil fuels.  Government money can incentivize businesses to begin production or shift existing production facilities to create and install solar panels, wind turbines and geothermal heating and cooling systems.  Special attention should be paid to areas that have been hard hit by loss of factory jobs in the Midwest, in Appalachia and upstate New York and parts of New England.  Factory retrofits and job training can create tens of thousands of jobs and revive some dying towns where even the local Walmart has shut down (after destroying local retailers that had long served those places).       

I’m not an economist, but to me these things are simply common sense and decency.  Put our tax dollars where they will help the most people long-term.  The stock market will eventually rebound, so the Dow Jones index should not be the yardstick now.  Keeping people afloat with the dignity of earning a paycheck is what should be our national economic priority.

The Social Impact of Social Distancing

 

 

Working from home these past several days has had its benefits, for sure.  No rushing to catch the train.  No 45 minutes of commuting each way, between the train and the walk to and from the station.

But there’s definitely been a social cost in order to maintain social distancing.  I miss the small interactions that normally punctuate each work day.

The brief chat or at least a wave to Elio, who runs the coffee stand at the Fleetwood train station.  I’ve known Elio for most of the 40+ years I‘ve been taking the train.  Over the years we’ve spoken about things ranging from business or politics to the weather or what life was like in his native Brazil.  In recent years, the topic is often grandchildren.

Then there’s Sam, the guy at the coffee cart at the corner of 44^th and 3^rd.  Actually, his full name is Samara.  Sam comes from Egypt, and much of his family is still there.  We chat about business, traffic and sometimes the pretty woman who just walked past his cart.

And there’s my friend Dahlia, a Russian woman who owns the Comfort Diner on E. 45^th Street.  I see her every week or so when I go for a lunch of eggs and a toasted bagel.  But I often see her as I’m on the way into work and she’s outside the diner taking a cigarette break.  I stop and remind her what she’s doing to her lungs, but we’ll also talk about kids or politics or life in general. 

When I get into the lobby of my building, I stop to say hi to Franco, who mans the lobby desk.  It’s usually a quick hello, but sometimes it’s more.

A few times a week I see my friend Gregory, the doorman at The Kimberly Hotel.  Whenever I see him, he takes off his gloves to shake my hand.  We'll usually chat about the weather, but we’ve spoken about so much more – work, family, politics.  Unlike me, Gregory’s not working from home these days.  He’s not working, since the hotel is shut down for a few weeks.  I pray he’s still drawing a paycheck.

They’re all brief exchanges, but they are part of my daily routine – a routine that’s been interrupted by something I can’t see called COVID-19.

Most of us have lost little pieces of our daily routines and those little losses add up to an unsettling change.

It’s nice to be home, but it will be nice to – eventually – get my routine back.   

Trust ... A Precious Commodity

Those of us in the Public Relations business know that trust is something that is difficult to earn and easy to lose.  It's something that is built up over time, by being consistent and truthful.

This president has never attempted to earn the trust of the American people, right from his first day in office when he lied about the size of his inauguration crowd.  There were the photos right in front of us, yet he asked us to believe his words rather than our own eyes.

He's been doing this repeatedly for the past three years, despite videotape, photos and transcripts that we all can see that prove he's lied to us again and again and yet again.

So it comes as no surprise that, after nearly 27,000 documented lies and exaggerations since 2016, most of us put little stock in what he says.

Trust in our government and our leader in a time of crisis is essential, and these past few weeks as the coronavirus has overtaken our lives have been a very sad case history of how important trust – and truth -- is. 

Most Americans simply do not trust the president on matters of public health and COVID-19. 

We've turned instead to the major networks and major papers for accurate information and advice.  A new poll shows 53 percent of us beehive what we are seeing on network news (excluding FOX) as opposed to about 41 percent who trust what the president tells us. 

Instead, we listen to or governor's, mayor's and health experts like Dr. Fauci, who hasn't (yet) been corrupted or compromised by the president to lie to us about the seriousness of this health situation.

What a pathetic state of affairs where we can't believe the White House in a time of national crisis.

I love the headline in today's New York Times: "Saying He Long Saw Pandemic, Trump Rewrites History."

The story documents the statements he's made that minimize or mock the seriousness of this pandemic, going back to Jan. 22 when he said he wasn’t worried at all and said “it was one or two people coming in from China.”  Even two days ago, he said the pandemic would " wash away," whatever that means. 

And now he says he’s known it was a pandemic for a long time.  So he again lies to our faces, denying what we all have seen and heard with our own eyes and ears for the past few weeks.  He continues to chip away at whatever little trust might remain.

Oh, how nice it would be to again be able to believe what our president tells us.