2021 Will Be Difficult: A Flexible Plan Is Key

December 29, 2020

// By Alan Shoebridge //

Alan ShoebridgePredicting the future is always a dicey proposition, but from a marketing perspective it has generally been sort of, well, predictable. Most experienced professionals know how to prepare for an upcoming year with the general acceptance that a few minor bumps along the road will always come up.

I know that’s the way I approached 2020 as the director of marketing and communications at Salinas Valley Memorial Healthcare System. By mid-March, everything had changed for me and my team. Daily email updates to employees and creating nonstop COVID-19 web content, podcasts, videos, and public messaging campaigns on the fly became the norm. And as I write this article, we’re in the midst of a third wave of COVID-19 in California and still doing all of that work and more.

As we look ahead to 2021, everyone who works in health care wonders how the upcoming year will unfold. I think it’s safe to assume that next year will start off as basically the opposite of 2020. It will likely begin in full chaos mode as COVID-19 continues to disrupt the economy, burden our healthcare system, and impact our personal and professional lives.

That prediction might sound bleak, but there is light at the end of the tunnel. Vaccines should be readily available by the middle of 2021 and certainly most frontline healthcare workers will be protected even sooner. Slowly, a sense of normalcy will develop, and you will need to respond.


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