Examining the change in brands’ marketing communication during COVID-19 from crisis communication perspective

Proper communication has been considered essential during a crisis for brands (Li & McCrary, 2022; Lou et al., 2023), because transmitting accurate and reliable information to all stakeholders is vital during such a situation (Coombs, 2010). Specifically, externally driven crises impact businesses and brands significantly. For example, Volkswagen’s gas emission scandal influenced the reputations of other brands in the industry (Trump & Newman, 2017); the TransAsia Airways accident eroded people’s trust and safety perceptions toward other airlines (Li et al., 2015); and the Great Recession led to the bankruptcy of giant enterprises such as GM and Chrysler in the US (Duignan, 2024). Brands also had to respond to the changes in consumer behavior during the COVID-19 pandemic (henceforth, “the pandemic”) (Donthu & Gustafsson, 2020; Mehta et al., 2020). The pandemic, a unique exogenous-based crisis, demands novel communication approaches (Wenzel et al., 2020; Whitler et al., 2021).

Previous research indicates how brands adjusted their communication strategies to encourage socially responsible behaviors (Deutsch & Mouton, 2022), integrated pandemic-related content into their communication materials (Mele et al., 2023), employed positivity and humor (Belobrovkina & Rodgers, 2023), and incorporated emotional and ethical themes (Mangiò et al., 2021) during the pandemic. However, most studies on crisis communication have primarily centered on creating messages or compiling social reactions, and only a few have investigated message types, timing, appropriateness, congruence of information dissemination, and actor coordination through time (Bányász, 2023). Also, most studies on crisis communication after major crises have been conducted in the US and European countries (Eisele et al., 2021; Verhoeven et al., 2014). With few exceptions (e.g., Chaskar & Upadhyay, 2023), past research relies on data from developed countries. Additional research across diverse regions is necessary to understand different communication strategies. Moreover, existing research often overlooks the changing nature of communication strategies across the pandemic’s phases, instead focusing on shorter timeframes (Scheiwiller & Zizka, 2021). Situational crisis communication theory (SCCT) has been extensively applied in crisis communication research; however, the literature reveals inconsistent results, indicating the need for more robust communication strategies than those typically provided by SCCT, particularly in light of the pandemic’s severity and prolonged duration (Zizka & Chen, 2024).

In this study, we aim to provide insights into the diverse crisis communication strategies that brands can use in case of socially disruptive external crises. Specifically, we examine how and to what extent companies have altered their digital communication strategies in response to the pandemic. We answer these questions from two perspectives: interviews provide information regarding marketing professionals’ communication-related strategy decisions during the pandemic, and social media analysis offers insights into how those strategies were implemented.

This research examines the pandemic as an illustration of an exogenous brand crisis and employs the SCCT (Coombs & Holladay, 2002; Coombs, 2007) as the theoretical framework. To address the identified gaps in the current literature, we utilize an exploratory research design that combines qualitative and quantitative methodologies. Regarding qualitative analysis, we performed 11 interviews with marketing experts and analyzed the transcriptions using thematic analysis (Braun & Clarke, 2006, 2019). The primary objective of these interviews was to obtain insights into strategy construction related to marketing communication, rather than to assess the generalizability of the findings. We used these insights to evaluate the results of quantitative research. For quantitative research, we employed text-mining tools to examine the social media messages posted on the X accounts of the brands under investigation. Consistent with previous research emphasizing the role of brands in society during times of crisis, this study investigates how established national and international brands in an emerging economy, Türkiye, adapted their marketing communication strategies to the pandemic-driven circumstances compared to previous and post-pandemic. This article is in response to several scholars who have emphasized the need to investigate the marketing strategies employed at different stages of the pandemic (Maulana, 2020; Scheiwiller & Zizka, 2021). By studying the context of an emerging market, we also address calls by Tebessi et al. (2024), Basri and Siam (2019), and Ajayi and Mmutle (2021) to study more deeply other contexts outside of the US and Europe.

In the subsequent sections of the study, we commence with an examination of SCCT, followed by a literature review. Then, we elaborate on qualitative and quantitative research methodologies, respectively. Thereafter, we provide discussion, practical implications, and research limitations. The article ends with a conclusion section.

Effective communication is a challenge for all actors in society, depending on the severity of the crisis. To cope with the crisis-driven circumstances in terms of strategic communication, the literature suggests various approaches. For example, Sturges (1994) proposes a model of “crisis communication content,” which advises organizations to use instructional, adjusting, and internalizing crisis communication strategies in communication materials. The maturity level of the crisis defines the weight of the strategy used. The model’s ultimate goal is to efficiently and effectively influence the opinion development of important community members. Another example is Benoit’s (1997) “image restoration discourse.” This model focuses on message strategies based on the type of crisis threatening the organization. These strategies include denial, evasion of responsibility, reduction of offensiveness in events, corrective action, and mortification. Lee (2020) discusses that stealing thunder, which is a crisis strategy claiming to be proactive and honest during the whole process of crisis management, would be an effective communication strategy during crises.

Conversely, SCCT, the foundational theory of this study, claims that understanding the current crisis is essential for formulating appropriate response strategies to protect the organization’s reputation. The theory posits that experts should initially identify the type of crisis. This assessment enables experts to assess the organization’s ability to manage the crisis and the degree to which the public holds the organization accountable for it. Based on these initial evaluations, they determine the appropriate response strategies to the crisis. This aspect of SCCT is a significant contribution to the crisis communication literature because earlier crisis response strategies had been evaluated independently from the type of crisis and organizational responsibility. In SCCT, organizational responsibility serves as a conceptual link between crisis situations and crisis response strategies (Coombs & Holladay, 2002; Coombs, 2006, 2007). With these aspects, SCCT is regarded as one of the pioneering theories in crisis communication, which elucidates the impact of crisis response strategies and offers guidance for organizational communication during crises (Coombs & Tachkova, 2024).

Depending on the crisis cluster, communication can take various forms, ranging from completely defensive to entirely accommodating. While denial and diminish strategies are rather defensive to protect organizational reputation, rebuild strategies are designed to be rather accommodative to address the victims of the crisis. In terms of organizational responsibility for a crisis, denial strategies are more appropriate if there is no organizational responsibility, whereas instructing and adjusting information can be employed when the organizational responsibility is minor. Furthermore, when the organization is largely responsible for the crisis, an apology, compensation, or both can be preferred, along with instructing and adjusting information (Coombs, 2019).

The literature frequently uses SCCT to evaluate the communication strategies of various companies. For instance, one research study indicates the use of dealing-based communication strategies during the pandemic, whereas denial strategies were not preferred (Parmelee & Greer, 2023). Hotels, on the contrary, utilized denial strategies (Chaskar & Upadhyay, 2023) specifically at the beginning of the pandemic to highlight that it would be limited in China (Atasoy et al., 2022). As asserted by the SCCT, instructional messages implicitly address victimization by emphasizing health and hygiene. Many organizations reportedly used instructing and adjusting information to minimize reputational damage during the pandemic (Dhar & Bose, 2022). However, contrary to the claims of the SCCT, the research indicates the infrequent use of adjusting information in communication materials (Brewer & Imes, 2023). Instructional messages in organizations’ social media posts contained pandemic updates, as well as empathy, solidarity, and moral support (Kwork et al., 2022). Moreover, organizations used instructive messages to encourage individuals toward certain behaviors that might help them cope with pandemic-related conditions (Brewer & Imes, 2023). These results are consistent with other research as well, because brands included informative content in their communication materials to educate and motivate individuals toward desired behaviors that align with the rules aimed at controlling the spread of the pandemic (Hesse et al., 2021).

The pandemic engendered new communication needs, including anxiety, empathy, efficacy, fatigue, reach, and threat, and necessitated careful consideration of these needs when crafting effective communication strategies (Coombs, 2020). However, scientific evidence indicates that organizations often opt for less optimal communication strategies during crises instead of the ones recommended in the literature (Claeys & Coombs, 2020). Even if the pandemic is an unintended, accidental, and totally exogenously driven crisis, it can still damage organizational reputation (Brewer & Imes, 2023; Macnamara, 2021). Considering this challenge, we investigated how national and international brands have changed their communication patterns to transmit their desired messages to the public appropriately. While the interviews provided us with the strategic plans of marketing professionals, the social media messages provided insights regarding the execution of the strategies.

Marketing professionals express that organizations with robust digital capabilities are more adaptive to pandemic conditions. Indeed, it is evident that organizations recognizing the advantages of technical developments exhibit enhanced resilience in times of crisis (Tiwari et al., 2023). The brands’ social media messages also show this trend, as online transactions were more important than other topics during the pandemic. Moreover, we identified that companies incorporated specific communication campaigns to promote certain products suited to the pandemic conditions. This finding aligns with previous studies, which discuss that people may not always view companies’ promotional activities as opportunistic during a crisis (Brewer & Imes, 2023). This result demonstrates that companies, as one of the victims of the pandemic, arrange their communication to promote specific products or services during prolonged crises, and hence, they benefit from the COVID-19-driven circumstances. Therefore, we also note that when creating communication during long-lasting externally driven crises that fall under the victim cluster, marketing professionals should consider the specific needs such as digitalization or the production of suitable products.

In relation to the contextual dynamics, the pandemic heightened individuals’ consciousness regarding sustainability, societal issues, and the viability of the future. In response to this perception, companies have communicated their efforts, such as participating in corporate social responsibility activities to demonstrate solidarity (Hesse et al., 2021), ensuring strong support for consumers and communities (Păunescu & Mátyus, 2020), and promoting pro-social behavior through their corporate messages (Hoang et al., 2023). In accordance with previous research, our results collected under the theme of societal benefit demonstrate that marketing professionals carried out comparable transactions as well, and they tried to craft communications properly to share their efforts with the public during the pandemic. However, while brands are concerned about positive or negative occurrences affecting society, there is a notable lack of emphasis on sustainability-related communications in social media. This trend is also evident in the research revealing inadequate promotion of socially responsible behaviors in brand messages, especially after the pandemic-driven initial shock (Deutsch & Mouton, 2022).

The pandemic compelled marketing professionals to construct their messages at the right time in the appropriate manner (Jacobson et al., 2023) and to be as cautious as possible while designing these messages (Hoang et al., 2023). Moreover, studies have asserted that consumers have preferred emotionally oriented messages over rationally oriented ones (Wang et al., 2021) and exhibited greater interest in messages that convey optimism (Hesse et al., 2021) and hope during the pandemic (Arora et al., 2022). Therefore, formulating brand messages with only informative content would be insufficient during a socially disruptive and prolonged crisis like the pandemic. In particular, we present that the emotive pattern in communication materials varied according to the phase of the pandemic. For instance, we observed an increase in terms related to trust and fear during the pandemic compared to the previous period, while terms related to surprise, anticipation, and joy decreased (Figure 6, upper panel). Moreover, while the use of anticipation and joy-related terms rises, the ones related to sadness decrease (Figure 6, lower panel) after the pandemic. Similarly, the use of positive emotions like trust, anticipation, joy, and surprise increases in the messages related to digitalization from during to post-pandemic, whereas the negative ones like fear, sadness, and anger decrease (Figure 7). Thus, the theme of circumspect and peaceful communication aligns with the previous research and reflects how the companies used adjusting information emotionally in their communications during the crisis. This helps individuals to cope with the crisis’ psychological effects, which complies with the SCCT suggestion.

Previous research suggests that companies should inform consumers about the pandemic-related precautions taken within the organization (Palakshappa et al., 2022) and prioritize the safety of both consumers and employees (Jacobson et al., 2023; Mele et al., 2023; Scheiwiller & Zizka, 2021). The theme of COVID-19-related precautions also emphasized health- and hygiene-related topics as a major focus during the pandemic. The results highlight the importance of keeping consumers informed about the crisis developments. Considering this issue, Kwork et al. (2022) expand the SCCT by including the prevention dimension as a sub-dimension of the rebuilding posture. These findings support the key idea of SCCT, which posits that providing instructive information can protect stakeholders from possible physical harm during a crisis (Coombs, 2015; Parmelee & Greer, 2023). However, even though the marketing professionals frequently expressed their efforts regarding pandemic-related precautions, we were unable to observe signals of these precautions as much as expected among the dominant topics identified in social media messages.

Customer centricity emerged as a crucial strategy to address the rapidly evolving consumer demands during the pandemic (Chaturvedi & Karri, 2022). Thanks to the digital advancements, not only were companies able to provide alternative services to customers (Juliana et al., 2023), but personalization also exerted a substantial influence on the customer experience during the pandemic (Girija et al., 2023). Consistent with the aforementioned research, the theme of consumer orientation highlights how companies have devised specific strategies to prioritize customer benefits and experiences during the pandemic with the aim of preventing potential disruptions caused by the conditions. Yu et al.’s (2022) research also reveals that companies should focus on not only company reputation but also customer expectations during the pandemic, thereby extending SCCT suggestions.

Brands were uncertain about whether to communicate crisis- or non-crisis-related messages to consumers at the beginning of the crisis (Jacobson et al., 2023). This concern led to the temporary suspension of marketing-based transactions (Mangiò et al., 2021). Brands shifted their focus toward people-driven and socially-oriented messages by highlighting safety and community (Deutsch & Mouton, 2022). Similarly, our analysis reveals a postponement of marketing activities, especially during the pandemic’s onset, as reflected in the theme of suspension of marketing campaigns. However, we also demonstrate that companies pursue their marketing-based campaigns after some time, particularly if the crisis exhibits long-lasting characteristics. A similar pattern is evident in text-mining results, because communication campaigns lost their relative importance compared to the other topics during the pandemic. However, this trend reverses after the global pandemic, which indicates the importance of the temporal dimension in crisis communication (Atasoy et al., 2022).

The pandemic hindered promotional activities like outdoor or studio photoshoots. However, brands had to maintain their presence by communicating with consumers as appropriately and sensitively as possible. At this stage, the adoption of digital communication tools became crucial for diversifying communication channels (Hu & Olivieri, 2023). The theme of diversification of communication channels underscores how corporations effectively communicated their messages to consumers across various media platforms during the challenging pandemic times. For instance, sectoral groups collaborated with influencers to encourage responsible behavior among the public, thereby mitigating the pandemic’s impact (Mele et al., 2023), a finding that aligns with our research. Even the investment in influencer marketing has risen during the pandemic (Sheth, 2022).

This research offers insights for marketing professionals regarding communication strategies during long-lasting crises. We recommend that professionals enhance organizations’ digital capabilities in advance to effectively respond to potential external crises and that the organizations can provide specific products and/or services that meet the demands of the situation. We emphasize the importance of diversifying communication channels, particularly digital ones, to engage a broad spectrum of consumers during socially disruptive times. We also suggest that companies should prioritize social benefits during these times and clearly reflect this issue in their communication materials by utilizing diverse communication channels. Furthermore, our findings indicated a partial inconsistency between strategy formulation and its implementation regarding certain topics. For instance, despite the significant emphasis placed on sustainability by companies, this topic does not appear to be a prevalent theme in social media communications. This point is significant, emphasizing the necessity for consistency between strategy construction and execution in conveying intended messages to the public. SCCT advises safeguarding the company’s reputation through the implementation of crisis communication strategies. However, we demonstrate that it is also crucial to incorporate concepts related to customer orientation, such as customer experience and customer benefit, as highlighted in prior research (Yu et al., 2022). Finally, it is critical to consider the temporal dimension of a crisis. Organizations should structure their communications in alignment with the stages of the crisis. For example, companies are advised to suspend promotion-oriented messages, especially at the onset of a crisis; however, they may resume promotional activities as the crisis’s impact lessens or as the public adapts to the circumstances. However, it is vital to note that the severity of the crisis affects societal anxiety levels. Therefore, to mitigate crisis-related anxiety, brand messages should include peaceful discourse addressing social welfare. Specifically, emotional communication plays a significant role in executing this strategy. Our results underscore the importance of aligning the sentiment of brand messages with the overall emotional state of the public. For instance, during crisis times, brand messages might incorporate trust, an essential emotion, by adding related terms. As anxiety spreads throughout society, circumspect and cautious communication becomes appropriate, rather than creative promotional activities.

This research, while providing insights into crisis communication during turbulent periods and extending SCCT by highlighting aspects such as the temporal course of a crisis, emotive communication, and customer centricity, is not free of limitations. First, we conducted this research in Türkiye, as a representative of an emerging market. Other scholars may employ a comparable research framework to investigate studies in other emerging regions. Second, even if our quantitative research is exclusively conducted in Turkish, another researcher can evaluate our findings using the same data set translated into English. Third, we did not distinguish between national and international brands in our dataset. Consequently, comparative research that examines national and international brands independently may yield valuable insights. Fourth, we conducted interviews with 11 professionals to obtain ideas on crisis communication prior to initiating quantitative study. Conducting interviews with a greater number of professionals could produce more substantial results and a deeper comprehension of the strategies utilized during crises. Fifth, we are expected to encounter diverse crises in the future, including political, economic, or social problems. Future research may utilize a crisis other than the COVID-19 pandemic as a reference event and employ a similar research strategy to assess the comparability of the outcomes. Sixth, we designed our research as purely exploratory. Therefore, further research can be designed as a confirmatory one by adding the consumer perspective into the research to test how consumers react to communication strategies recommended in this research during a crisis. Finally, this study has not investigated industrial variances. Consequently, undertaking additional research to analyze communication variations across different sectors may prove beneficial.

The pandemic represents a unique case of externally driven crises, characterized by its extensive impact and prolonged duration. It required institutions to implement new communication strategies to address the challenges posed by pandemic-related conditions (Coombs, 2020; Reber et al., 2020; Wenzel et al., 2020; Whitler et al., 2021 in Coombs & Tachkova, 2024, p. 9). Based on this necessity and utilizing SCCT, this research examines the extent to which companies have altered their communication strategies in response to the COVID-19 pandemic. Seven critical themes emerged from the interviews with the marketing professionals: the benefits of the COVID-19 pandemic, the societal benefits, the importance of circumspect and peaceful communication, the precautions related to COVID-19, consumer orientation, the suspension of marketing campaigns, and the need to diversify communication channels. Additionally, social media post analysis reveals that companies structure their message content in alignment with the progression of crises. Certain topics diminish in significance, such as marketing communication, while others, like online transactions, gain prominence during the crisis. Moreover, brands are sensitive to the public’s emotional fluctuations and tailor their social media messages accordingly. Therefore, we demonstrate that in addition to organizational reputation and responsibility attribution as suggested by SCCT, it is essential to consider emotional, contextual, and temporal variations to construct effective crisis communication, particularly during long-lasting and extensive crises like the pandemic.

We wish to express our gratitude to reviewers for their valuable comments throughout the review process and Prof. Dr. Zeynep İrem Erdoğmuş and Assoc. Prof. Dr. Umut Asan for their theoretical and methodological insights throughout the article's development.

Authors state no funding involved.

Mustafa Murat Cerit: Conceptualization, Data Curation, Formal Analysis, Methodology, Writing – Original Draft Preparation. Elif Karaosmanoğlu: Conceptualization, Methodology, Supervision, Writing – Review & Editing.

Authors state no conflict of interest.