Case Study: ECOS

Attention amid a pandemic

How do you earn attention for a product company amid a pandemic?

ECOS, a 53-year-old green cleaning company, was rocked like so many businesses by the fallout from the COVID-19 pandemic. Ironically, over the following weeks, and with a never-before-seen demand for cleaning products, product PR not only wasn’t necessary, it wasn’t appropriate. In a media climate much like the one post-9/11, the media tone became somber, concerned, and focused on a tragedy unfolding. Light, fluffy coverage wasn’t right. 

How then would we maintain momentum and elevate the voice of this company during a crisis?

What we did

We instituted a Covid Crisis intelligence briefing, tracking relevant news on peers in the cleaning space, updates from the CDC, and mainstream media, and providing analysis back to our client to help guide responses and our outreach strategy. We wanted to really understand the dynamic landscape as it changed, almost daily, and communicate to our team about how that traction should influence our approach — what media were writing about, and what our consumers were saying over social.

Through this analysis, we realized that the most urgent areas to address were the health and safety of consumers and best practices to mitigate the spread of the virus, and the economic impact caused by the pandemic.

We shifted from a product-centric approach to one focused on serving consumers with important information about sanitation, the potential risks in using cleaning products laden with chemicals that might trigger allergies or other reactions, and the efficacy of green cleaning products, boosting visibility of the ECOS executive team and curating conversations about safe cleaning with media through live video chats and articles. 

At the same time, we pivoted to telling a counterintuitive business story: how ECOS was fulfilling unprecedented demand and remaining strong despite upturned supply chains through its sustainable business practices. 

We used the tenor of the time in order to elevate the company, both for its unique position offering cleaning products in a pandemic, and its sustainable manufacturing process that added strength to its operations and ability to fulfill product demand and supply essential cleaners to the marketplace.

ECOS’ strong leadership, quality products, and our positioning efforts combined to place ECOS at the center of the discussion, as an example of how to effectively and safely lead your company through a pandemic, and these lessons can be applied to any global crisis.