During the economic shutdown caused by the global COVID-19 pandemic, most businesses are sailing uncharted waters. It’s a time that feels familiar due to economic downturns of the past, yet very different due to the controlled, systematic shutdown of society across the country to prevent the spread of the virus.
 
The economic impact, though it seems necessary, cannot be ignored. Businesses, especially small businesses, are determining how to react to this new sudden circumstance. It begs the question, what do I do first to survive, and second to grow my business?
 
Public Relations (PR), along with your marketing efforts, can provide some of the smartest ways to succeed. Smart businesses will use time like this to increase their presence to become stronger and more competitive – specially prepared for the end of the crisis. For example, Maloy PR is offering its PR services with three new discounted price packages tailored to help businesses get through this difficult time. A strategic move to make it easier for small businesses to utilize PR in their efforts, while frankly, helping Maloy PR maintain and grow business as well during this time
 
Here are a few reasons to maintain or even increase your public relations and marketing efforts.
 

1. This is not the time to cut PR and marketing budgets. It is an essential marketing principle that those who maintain or increase their PR and marketing budgets outperform those who cut. Whether your customers are B2B or B2C, they want to know they are working with dependable brands. Retaining your PR instills confidence, can help maintain or increase your business and makes you more durable at the end of the crisis. 
2. Focus on the positive, not just the negative. Often during economic downturns, businesses need to report bad news such as layoffs, illnesses caused by a coronavirus, revenue drops, adjustments to earnings forecast, and others. But there is also the opportunity to report great news. For example, small businesses across the country switched their business model midstream to help fight the pandemic by manufacturing protective masks, hand sanitizer, or other personal protective equipment. Communicating this news brings hope and optimism to our communities and positions your company as an active participant. One of my favorite companies, Dearborn Denim and Apparel in Chicago, did just that. To help people protect themselves and others from the virus, to keep their employees working and their shops going, they began making washable cloth facemasks right alongside their line of denim jeans. This is an excellent example of positive news. 
3. Thought Leadership and Expertise. It’s not all about promoting your company, though that certainly is a benefit. Thought leadership and expertise communicated during a time of crisis can be invaluable to your business and your community. Silicon Slopes, an association of high-tech companies in Utah, wasn’t about to allow a lack of testing infrastructure slowdown data collection necessary to stop the virus. Led by Domo’s Josh James and other tech company leaders, Silicon Slopes partnered with the State of Utah and, within a matter of days, doubled, tripled, and continue to increase virus testing locations throughout the state. It is a remarkable example of the private and government sectors working together to solve community problems. Communicating that leadership was vital. The point, your company may have many opportunities to speak as experts on a myriad of topics. 
4. Keep your loyal customers up to date on your products and development. Apple, known for its significant stage productions to launch new products, finds itself in a new world with new rules. Yet, the company still must develop, launch, and sell its popular products, including the iPhone. As a result of the coronavirus economic and social impact, Apple recently launched a major new iPhone – iPhone SE – with a press release. As a brand, Apple is one that can’t make any move without extensive media coverage. But the fact that Apple remained sensitive to the need to exercise global social distancing not only communicates a new product but promoted its global citizenship. 

We currently live in difficult times. The difficulty will undoubtedly pass, though it is hard to tell when. Even so, this can be a time of optimism and growth; one public relations can and should play an active role.

NOTE: This discount has been extended through May 31, 2020.

Maloy PR today announced it would temporarily offer discounted public relations programs for businesses working through the economic impact of Coronavirus. The packages – Fundamental PR, Essential PR, or PRO PR – are designed to give businesses PR options and pricing to meet their specific needs.
 
Maloy PR is also offering an additional 10 percent discount on the Fundamental and Essential packages for businesses who sign up before April 15, 2020 (Discount extended through May 31, 2020). That means the Fundamental package will cost as low as $1,768 per month.
 
“This is an unprecedented time in our history,” said Cory Maloy, founder, and principal of Maloy PR. “Every business is feeling the weight and difficulty of the economic impact brought on by the Coronavirus pandemic. We feel it as well. We’re doing this to do our part in providing an important service that is needed more now than ever before at temporarily discounted prices for businesses working through these times.”
 
The Maloy PR packages:

• Fundamental – Especially suited for small businesses, provides basic public relations services at a low price.
• Essential – Provides more public relations services at a slightly higher price and is especially suited for small to medium businesses that have regular on-going news and stories to communicate.
• PRO – The PRO package is a traditional long-term public relations program designed for strategic mission accomplishment based on a business’s goals and objectives.

 
The discounted PR packages are available now and utilize Maloy PR’s proven public relations programs to help businesses communicate, explain, and engage with the world.
 
“This is just the right thing to do during this time. Businesses are pulling together, working together, to serve their customers to the best of their ability. We’re pleased to offer these discounted packages to help everyone get through this economic hardship,” said Maloy
 
About Maloy PR
 
Located in Lehi City, Utah, the heart of Silicon Slopes, Maloy PR is a full-service public relations firm offering high-value public relations programs at reasonable prices. The firm has decades of experience serving some of the best-known PR agencies and companies in the United States. The firm has no expensive operating costs or overhead, which allows it to provide higher service at better rates. www.maloypr.com
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​Recently, young women in Malawi, Africa, were given clothing from the volunteers and staff of the World of Difference. With smiles of gratitude and excitement, the girls and young women received dresses lovingly handmade in Vineyard, Utah, by Arda Molen. What the girls didn’t realize was Arda’s right hand was severely damaged from years of sewing thousands of dresses. Dresses she donated to several organizations to distribute in locations around the world.
 
The damage caused by the repetitive motions of sewing required surgery to correct Arda’s hand earlier this month. To her, the difficulties of her hand are worth the joy she feels knowing girls are benefiting from her efforts. Girls who, in many cases, are receiving their very first dress.
 
“Arda’s work is the fulfillment of her dream to serve young people she doesn’t even know,” said Dr. Richard P. Nielsen, co-founder and president of World of Difference, and founding president of Rocky Mountain University of Health Professions (RMUoHP) and the Noorda College of Osteopathic Medicine (proposed). “Each year, we are in a blessed position to serve the people of Africa. We have the opportunity of witnessing the joy and happiness expressed by young girls receiving the dresses Arda has sewn by hand.”
 
Nielsen estimates they have given nearly 1,000 of Arda’s dresses over the past few years. He and a group of volunteers comprised of students, faculty, and staff from RMUoHP and other local participants travel to Africa each year. This year they were in Malawi, Africa where they spent a few weeks working alongside local chiefs, leaders, and others serving children by renovating dilapidated existing schools and building a primary school and library stocked with items, helping the kids in local orphanages, drilling a bore-hole water well in the local village where they worked, working on permaculture initiatives, and other service oriented activities to help provide new opportunities for the people there.
 
They also provided clinical experiences for RMUoHP students, faculty and other healthcare professionals. In addition to Arda’s dresses, Nielsen and his wife, Jodi, and the World of Difference team took 6,000 pounds of educational supplies and materials, tools, athletic equipment, and partnering with Days for Girls International, provided feminine hygiene kits to use in the orphanages.
 
Arda, an experienced seamstress, began sewing in earnest all of the dresses she could about four years ago after sustaining substantial injuries from a car accident. Since she faced a long-term recovery following the crash, she made a decision to do something to help others during and following her recuperation.
 
“I decided instead of sitting around feeling sorry for myself, I would do something for somebody who was worse off than me,” she said. “And that’s when I started [making the dresses]. I just did it.”
 
For four years since then, that’s about all she has done. She sews dresses six to eight hours per day and estimates she has made about 5,000 dresses.
 
Arda, the seamstress, and Nielsen, the university president, and humanitarian make a unique team that serves underprivileged children, orphans or victims of sex crimes in different parts of the world.
 
“We work with a few different orphanages in Malawi, where we distribute Arda’s dresses to young girls,” said Nielsen. “There’s just no money over there that is available to support those kids. They usually wear clothing they’ve been wearing for many months and even years. They get holes in them, they are too big or too small, and often unclean.
 
“Arda takes t-shirts and then makes skirts that attach to the shirts and turns them into dresses,” said Nielsen. “I’ve raised five kids and seen the excitement on Christmas morning in their eyes, but nothing compares to the excitement among these girls as they receive Arda’s dresses. It’s one of the best things they’ve ever received in their young lives. It truly makes a difference.”
 
Nielsen is quick to point out Arda has literally given her hands and soul to helping these young girls throughout the world. “The work she does is so important and helps so many people who are so less fortunate than all of us,” he said.
 
In addition to distributing the dresses, Nielsen and the World of Difference volunteers distribute additional clothing and items to both girls and boys in the orphanages they visit in Malawi. They receive the clothing from various people and organizations to distribute to kids from ages four to 20 who benefit from these clothing donations.
 
Sewing 5,000 dresses over the years has taken a toll on Arda. She has gone through three sewing machines and currently uses her “faithful Bernina.” The repetitive motions of sewing, cutting material, and other actions using mostly her right hand created a situation where she was in great pain. Pain caused by the rubbing of bone-on-bone, worn-out cartilage, and strained ligaments resulted in two different surgeries in her hand to correct the issues.
 
“The constant repetition just wore my hand out,” she said. “It ached clear up past my elbow, and the pain never stopped. I could only sleep about an hour at a time due to the pain.”
 
Arda reports the surgeries were a success. Following a time of recuperation, she looks forward to getting back to work on making more dresses. In the meantime, other people she knows are working to help her keep the dressmaking going.
 
The partnership between Arda and Nielsen and the World of Difference volunteers brings joy and happiness to many young people in different parts of the world. The question has to be asked, though, what drives them to do it?
 
According to Nielsen, it’s a culture and attitude of service to others that comes from within. “Honestly, you don’t have to go around the world or across the oceans to do the type of service we do. You can do it around your neighborhood corners or across the back fence. There are people we can serve all around us. You don’t have to go out of your way to serve someone – you can simply do it on your way.”
 
Nielsen points out about 609,000 people are living in Utah County, Utah, and about 72,000 of them live below the poverty line.
 
“That’s why our Rocky Mountain University of Health Professions Foundation started free clinics to help the indigent, under-served, non-insured and those without the means to receive the healthcare they need,” he said. “These people are in poverty, they’re under-resourced and have no means to pay for these services, just as the people in Africa are. We need to reach out to them to help give them opportunities they wouldn’t typically have.
 
“There is a peaceful feeling that just comes over you in helping others. We have all experienced it. We all have the opportunity to serve and help others here in our communities as well as in other parts of the world,” said Nielsen.
 
For Arda, who has no intention of slowing down her dressmaking, the story is similar, but also different. She has seen and heard the stories of horrific conditions young girls have gone through and has a strong desire to help them and bring them happiness. She keeps a folder of pictures of all the dresses she has made. Among them are photos sent to her of girls wearing her dresses. One shows four girls rescued from sex trafficking.
 
“When I get tired, and when my hand hurts really bad, I look at that picture,” said Arda. “Their smiles remind me [my discomforts] are nothing compared to what they have gone through. So, I just keep going. I kept going for four years. The swelling, the ripped ligaments, and the pain are all worth it when I see those smiling faces. I know they and many other girls are receiving help and happiness with some of the work I do.” 

I’ve treasured providing many public relations programs for great organizations over the years. Several of those experiences rise to the top as the most enjoyable. Trying to understand why some were more gratifying than others, I made a discovery while reflecting on the words found in Greg McKeown’s excellent book, essentialism: A Disciplined Pursuit of Less[i].
 
A small section about mission statements in his chapter about eliminating the trivial jumped out at me. After showing three mission statements that leave readers scratching their heads, McKeown pointed out, “The largely indistinguishable statements make the task almost impossible. Such vague, inflated mission statements may still be considered “’best practice’” in some quarters, but in many cases they do not achieve what they were intended to achieve: to inspire their employees with a clear sense of purpose.” (emphasis added)
 
I realized at that moment, the most enjoyable and successful PR programs over the years were for organizations who had a clear purpose – not necessarily a clear mission statement, but a clear mission.
 
I’ve found what McKeown found; when there is a sense of purpose or mission permeating the organization, everyone understands and does all they can to accomplish the mission—and they enjoy it. In McKeown’s words, “motivation and cooperation deteriorate when there is a lack of purpose. You can train leaders on communication and teamwork and conduct 360 feedback reports until you are blue in the face, but if a team does not have clarity of goals and roles, problems will fester and multiply.”
 
This is why, after more than 20 years providing successful public relations services for some of the best PR firms and organizations in the country, I’m proud to open Maloy PR, LLC, a full-service public relations firm located in the heart of Silicon Slopes offering high-value public relations programs to serve purpose-driven organizations. Some of the most successful PR programs are for organizations driven by a purpose to help the world become a better place – a clear mission. Maloy PR's mission is to assist organizations in achieving their mission through public relations.
 
Maloy PR looks at the mission as much more than a statement but as a determined understanding of how an organization wants to help people live better lives – a belief permeating their culture and driving every decision they make.
 
There is much satisfaction in helping organizations help other people. We’re not talking just nonprofit organizations either; there are plenty of profit-driven causes doing much for the world.
 
We’re opening Maloy PR in Lehi City the fast-growing economic engine in Utah. We get to live and work in the heart of one of the fastest growing business locations in the country – Silicon Slopes. There isn’t an organization anywhere that isn’t looking at Lehi individually and Utah overall to locate primary operations or businesses. Utah is where business is happening, and we’re excited to be a part of it.
 
Maloy PR offers high-value public relations programs at reasonable prices. We have no expensive operating costs or overhead, which allows us to provide higher service at better rates.
 
If you believe your organization is on a mission, let us know. We’ll sit down with you and develop a customized public relations program specifically designed to help you accomplish your mission.
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[i] Greg McKeown, essentialism: The Disciplined Pursuit of Less, New York, Crown Business, 2014, Vol. I, 120 – 121.