Jason Megson, managing director VP at George P. Johnson (GPJ) Experience Marketing, outlines his strategies for staff morale and ‘progressive ways’ to engage audiences

COVID-19 has brought with it tremendous challenges both for our business and our people.

GPJ’s number one priority is the health and well-being of our staff, and we have taken all necessary precautions to look after them at this time. We are embracing remote working, focusing resources on well-being initiatives (particularly with those who are isolating) and giving our people the flexibility to balance home and work during these exceptional times. The situation continues to evolve and so will our strategies for dealing with it.

From a business point of view our industry – live brand experience – has been one of the first to feel a heavy impact. Commercially, our clients have their own challenges to overcome and need to minimise the effect on their businesses.

We are here to help them do that – working in partnership with them to identify positive, progressive ways to continue to engage their audiences despite cancellations, postponements and travel bans. We are sharing our expertise, deploying our teams, digging into our global office experience and being inventive in the solutions we are providing.

This is an incredibly difficult time for our industry, and we are being realistic in our outlook. We are hopeful that the culture of GPJ will help us grow stronger through these challenging times. When we come out the other side of this pandemic an evolved live experience sector, with its power to truly connect people, will be hugely important, not just from a business point of view but for people themselves.

We have a responsibility, as one of the large experience agencies, to ensure we are supporting industry regrowth for the future. People will crave human interaction more than ever and it’s at this point brands and our industry will have a responsibility to help rebuild positive human connections.”