Creating a Pandemic Messaging Distribution Plan for Your Brand

There is no doubt that the COVID-19 pandemic has presented many new and unexpected challenges for businesses of all sizes. Safety, staffing and stability are all issues that companies have had to take into consideration while operating in 2020. Marketing departments have been working on overdrive, as brands strive to develop effective messaging to inform and empathize with consumers. But drafting these messages is just half the battle, however. Creating a distribution plan is the other necessary piece. As a graphic designer who has worked with brands both big and small, I’m sharing my strategy on how to best reach and inform your audience.

Consider Your Messaging Channels

Given the urgent and ever-changing nature of COVID-19 messaging, it is important to consider what messaging channels your brand will utilize. Earlier this year, I worked with a regional company to design COVID-19 messaging collateral to communicate the brand’s aid efforts to customers. The marketing department decided that email would be their primary channel as it would let the company reach a large number of people while including a larger amount of information.

Taking into consideration the possibility of frequent updates however, it was determined that this designed collateral piece would be repurposed for web and social media as well.

Design your Primary Piece of Content

The company’s marketing department decided on an infographic that would break down the aid numbers in an easy to read format. In a time when consumers are overloaded with data, this is an important consideration when crafting your brand’s messaging. Using Illustrator, I designed an infographic that combined company stats with a suite of new icons, highlighting different areas of aid (e.g. Small Business) in a visually appealing way utilizing brand colors and fonts. An infographic was also selected as it can easily be broken apart into smaller pieces - a necessary factor when using several different messaging channels.

Reformat and Distribute your Content across Channels

Once your main content piece is designed, it’s time to repurpose it for your other channels. I recommend choosing the absolute most important information in your message, and condensing it down even further -particularly for social media, where consumers are quick to scroll. After designing the overall infographic, I worked with the marketing department to pull the top stats and isolate them as standalone designs. These were used to highlight the company’s efforts as a hero banner on their website homepage where customers could click to learn more and view the full piece, as well as image carousels on Facebook, Instagram, Twitter and LinkedIn. The result was a concise and cohesive suite of designs that communicated the brand’s message across all of its selected channels.