Marketing Copy After Tragic Events: What’s the right tone?
OK already! If I get one more promotional email or ezine with prefacing remarks about our national tragedy, I’m going to scream. Yes we all feel very deeply about events. But when you stop and think about how many emails the average person gets … all of which contain about the same preface these days … you’ll see that bringing the subject up yet again when it’s out of context is overkill. It’s ok to go ahead and market something without a preface.
You don’t need to apologize for sending a marketing message at this time anymore.
Does this mean your message should be business as usual? Well, maybe not. Famed Manhattan-based author Fran Lebowitz noted on the radio that the consumer magazines she’s got in the mail last week, written and printed before the WTC events, seemed like “relics from another era. Very outdated.” Which means your normal happy-face-buy-now marketing messages of the past may not be quite right now.
However, if you just change them by sticking that way-overdone preface in front, it won’t help sales. This is where the true art of copywriting kicks in. Good luck.
Categories: Marketing
