If there is one valuable lesson a business can take from COVID-19 it’s that media contracts shouldn’t be taken lightly – and they aren’t easily broken or renegotiated. Over the last 6 months many businesses encountered the challenge of needing to adjust how their business is advertising during the pandemic. In some instances this was simply changing the messaging and creative for their ads to be relevant to what was going on in the world. In other instances, businesses faced closures, some temporary and some permanent. For these businesses, they had to consider whether they could cancel their advertising contracts or if they still owed for media spots that they no longer needed, resulting in even more financial loss. The lesson to be learned is that before you sign any contracts for media placement, you need to be sure you are protected if something as crazy as COVID-19 should again impact your business and how it use advertising.

So, how can you protect yourself moving forward? Here’s our advice for creating ‘Pandemic Media Protection’ for your business. Take a look.

First, you must really understand the terms of your contracts. Sure, reading through contracts isn’t the most entertaining pastime, but don’t phone this one in. Be sure you read through every piece so that you can catch anything that could be problematic for your business in the future. Before you sign anything, make sure your questions are answered. Think of all possible “What if?” scenarios. And if you do catch something that could be problematic for your business, negotiate before you sign. Once a contract is signed it’s far less likely you’ll have any leverage to make further changes to the terms.

If you hit a roadblock and can’t back out of your contract, make the best of it. Change your messaging to the most important thing you need to communicate to customers at this time. If your business had to temporarily close or change its policies, this is what you need to be telling your customers. Even if the worst case scenario happens and you are going out of business, this is still messaging you can use to spread the word about your going out of business sale.

Be smarter in the future. Some lessons are costly, but they don’t have to be repeated. For all future media contracts, consider building in more favorable terms should we ever have a statewide shutdown in the future. It’s likely media outlets have learned a lot from this experience as well and may be building in ‘pandemic’ terms into their future contracts. You’ll want to read these clauses carefully and consider how it could impact your business.

And finally, make sure you have an expert on your side. Mostly importantly, don’t go it alone. Team up with a media buying agency who can review your contracts and negotiate on your behalf. Media outlets look out for themselves, but who is looking out for you? A professional agency can purchase and monitor your media placement and handle your contracts to help shed light on your blind spots.

For a 60 second recap of the points covered above, click on the newest Mid-Atlantic Media Hub’s Media Minute below!

If there’s more you want to know about protecting your business’s media contracts, especially amidst COVID-19, we are here to help. Reach out today to us today!