The Ever-Changing New Normal

There is something about the idea of remote/hybrid work and meetings that seems antithetical to the art of public relations.

We try to get our clients as up-close-and-personal as possible with interested members of the media to not only showcase their expertise but also to create real relationships, and work shoulder to shoulder with clients to get their messages out there. The advance in video conferencing that was a rare positive of the pandemic made it easier to have some form of face-to-face communication across distances, but in the end its one dimension remains decidedly confining.

And so we find ourselves in a confused 2023, very much in a hybrid state itself, as we strive to consider life post-pandemic, but still have to deal with Covid’s disruption as outbreaks, spikes, new strains and warnings from health authorities wreak havoc on our planning. While we are nowhere near the situation of the  2020 shutdown, which strained the global economy to the breaking point and still has repercussions in labor and the supply chain, there are daily reminders of an ever-changing normal.

Recent weeks have seen giant steps toward resuming the “old normal” at DLPR as we settled into new Manhattan office space, held an in-person team summit, and ramped up the level of in-person client and client/media meetings, including in-studio broadcast appearances. As someone who prior to March 2020  had traveled regularly into Manhattan since my college years, it has been a strange sense of old and new, like the first days of school infused with major déjà vu.

Meeting face to face with clients and editors, sharing lunch and the actual human contact of a handshake have made me feel present in a way that, despite best intentions, simply isn’t possible over Zoom. Packing lunch in the morning for a day at the office and looking for parking near the train was also a blast from the past.

Who knows what looms in the near future, with the economy portending just as much volatility as the pandemic?

We’ll take what comes and roll with the punches. It’s what our clients do every day, and where they excel. We can certainly do no less.

By Adam Dickter, Vice President