Allowing your brand to be ‘naked’ in the wake of the Covid-19 crisis
By Trudi Bishop Director Bee Licensing trudi@beelicensing.com
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There have been few truly global events that have affected our world so deeply across the economic, social or environmental aspects of nations. Many comparisons have been made of COVID-19 to past pandemics – the Spanish flu, AIDS, SARS, Ebola, Smallpox, etc. As world leaders try to figure a way through this, war metaphors seem to be favoured, including the United Nations Secretary-General Antonio Gutiérrez, quoted here from the G20 COVID-19 summit in March, “We are at war with a virus – and not winning it”, going onto say, “…This war needs a war-time plan to fight it.” US President, Donald Trump has called himself a ‘war-time president’. It feels easy to make the virus the enemy in need of fighting as its easier to get people to comply and rally behind leadership decisions. But it also helps divert attention away from the why’s (why did this happen, why is it happening everywhere) and the how’s (how did this happen, how
do we prevent it happening again, how do we ever recover from this). One thing we know and unites the world is that COVID-19 does not discriminate – across race, religion, gender, business or nation. In attempts to answer the why, it is tempting to play the blame game. The wet markets of China have been waved as the cause, but they are only part of the story. It has been shown
that this and many other (more recent) pandemics (and more that are sure to come) have been the result of how we have been mistreating the planet for decades. In our pursuit for cheap food, fuel, clothing, consumer goods, we have ravenously consumed the world’s natural resources. Deforestation, drilling, the destruction of habitats/ecosystems and trading of wildlife has meant
