Now What?

Like most of the nation, we at Double Forte are drinking lots of coffee today after a very late night watching the presidential election results and we are wondering, “Now what?” What do the results mean? Where do we go from here? What are the messages, the takeaways, the path forward? These are questions all Americans are asking – not just the people whose candidate lost. This is a major moment in our country’s history and we all are trying to derive meaning from it – those who are celebrating and those who are bruised.

Here at the agency, we have a saying: Focus on what you can control: yourself. Along that vein, today we will focus on the “now what” for our agency, our clients, and our industry. We have just witnessed an election cycle like we have never seen before. It’s not just the rhetoric. It’s not just the leaks and hacks. It’s not just the tweet storms. It’s not just the media frenzy. It is all of those things. The communication styles and strategies in this election cycle broke all the rules. So, now what? How do we as professional communicators go forward?

Do we go back to business as usual? Safe, but effective communication? Do we stay high, when our competitors are going low? Do we continue to work with the mainstream media or do we bypass the way it used to work for social media onslaughts?  Must we revert to shock value to break though at all?

We don’t have all of the answers today, but we are fairly sure, that unlike in American politics, the answer lies somewhere in the middle, in moderation, and measured steps. We will never go back to how it was – not in any aspect. Communication, public relations, social media – like everything else, has changed forever. And so we ask you, how would you like to move forward?