Q&A With La Colombe’s SVP of Marketing on Staying Connected With Customers and Employees Through COVID-19
Q&A With La Colombe’s SVP of Marketing on Staying Connected With Customers and Employees Through COVID-19
Facebook BusinessCoffee retailer mission is simple: Make people happy through coffee. Like many businesses affected by the coronavirus outbreak, La Colombe temporarily closed their cafes earlier this year.
Despite the difficulties, the team continued spreading joy, offering support to frontline workers by donating over 30,000 cups of coffee to healthcare professionals in New York City and over 16,000 cans of coffee nationwide.
They’ve also reimagined how to use their online channels to connect with people who are working from home. La Colombe challenged their community to post photos of virtual meetings on Instagram with the hashtag #CheersRemotely and tag @lacolombecoffee for a chance to win free coffee.
Since many businesses are looking for ideas to help them pivot during these times, we asked La Colombe’s SVP of Marketing Kathryn O’Connor to tell us more about how La Colombe has been learning and adapting.
When La Colombe closed its cafes, how did your team’s priorities shift?
We wanted to connect with people and make a positive impact even when we couldn’t be in our stores serving our community. So we focused on what we could control: getting our customers and frontline workers great coffee and cold brew.
Speaking of connecting with people, your #CheersRemotely giveaway seemed to do exactly that. What inspired the idea?
Listening to our community really helps us spark inspiration. Like many people, we found ourselves at home balancing work with family and childcare responsibilities. With so much going on, we thought there might be a way for us to make people’s days a little bit brighter, and #CheersRemotely came from that — it was a way for us to share and connect. We hoped it could bring together coworkers and teams, and help normalize this strange new reality.
What were the results?
Our community has been responsive, engaged and willing to share their experiences with us. This moment shifted our strategy and led us to develop content around life at home, like giving away coffee for virtual coffee dates, highlighting how to brew your own coffee at home with our baristas and making personal coffee recommendations.
We’ve heard that small businesses aren’t always sure what messaging to send out right now. How have you navigated this challenge?
We’re a hopeful brand, rooted in optimism. So we’ve stayed away from language that could perpetuate additional hardship during a difficult time. We’ve avoided using language like “stock up” that implies you should hoard coffee. Instead of looking back, we’ve adjusted our language to focus on the future. There will be a world post-COVID-19 and we’ll get you your coffee in that world too.
How have you been staying connected with your team?
Finding ways to stay connected can be hard when you’re not only separated physically but dealing with a lot emotionally. But at La Colombe our culture is everything, and our people and community drive everything we do. We’ve hosted a company-wide meeting to engage with leadership, highlight colleagues, ask questions and spend time with one another. Our marketing team has weekly happy hours to check in and connect, and we set up an internal blog where we share business updates, inspiration and recipes.
What have been the biggest learnings from your efforts during this time?
This has changed the way we think and act. Our team has become incredibly nimble, constantly listening and learning from our followers and customers, and working to add value, and sometimes levity, when possible. As a business, our aspirations and mission statement have remained true, only now we include the word “safely” in everything we do.
We’re continuing to explore how we can help support businesses through this challenging time, and have created resources for how your restaurant or cafe can adapt and respond. You can also visit our Business Resource Hub to see additional opportunities and resources.
Has your business adapted during the COVID-19 pandemic? We’d like to hear from you.
Get Facebook Business news in your inbox.
Sign up for our monthly newsletter for the latest updates, insights, marketing trends and articles from Facebook.
Tags
Interviews
May 15, 2020
Q&A With La Colombe’s SVP of Marketing on Staying Connected With Customers and Employees Through COVID-19
C
Despite the difficulties, the team continued spreading joy, offering support to frontline workers by donating over 30,000 cups of coffee to healthcare professionals in New York City and over 16,000 cans of coffee nationwide.
They’ve also reimagined how to use their online channels to connect with people who are working from home. La Colombe challenged their community to post photos of virtual meetings on Instagram with the hashtag #CheersRemotely and tag @lacolombecoffee for a chance to win free coffee.
Since many businesses are looking for ideas to help them pivot during these times, we asked La Colombe’s SVP of Marketing Kathryn O’Connor to tell us more about how La Colombe has been learning and adapting.
When La Colombe closed its cafes, how did your team’s priorities shift?
We wanted to connect with people and make a positive impact even when we couldn’t be in our stores serving our community. So we focused on what we could control: getting our customers and frontline workers great coffee and cold brew.
Speaking of connecting with people, your #CheersRemotely giveaway seemed to do exactly that. What inspired the idea?
Listening to our community really helps us spark inspiration. Like many people, we found ourselves at home balancing work with family and childcare responsibilities. With so much going on, we thought there might be a way for us to make people’s days a little bit brighter, and #CheersRemotely came from that — it was a way for us to share and connect. We hoped it could bring together coworkers and teams, and help normalize this strange new reality.
What were the results?
Our community has been responsive, engaged and willing to share their experiences with us. This moment shifted our strategy and led us to develop content around life at home, like giving away coffee for virtual coffee dates, highlighting how to brew your own coffee at home with our baristas and making personal coffee recommendations.
We’ve heard that small businesses aren’t always sure what messaging to send out right now. How have you navigated this challenge?
We’re a hopeful brand, rooted in optimism. So we’ve stayed away from language that could perpetuate additional hardship during a difficult time. We’ve avoided using language like “stock up” that implies you should hoard coffee. Instead of looking back, we’ve adjusted our language to focus on the future. There will be a world post-COVID-19 and we’ll get you your coffee in that world too.
How have you been staying connected with your team?
Finding ways to stay connected can be hard when you’re not only separated physically but dealing with a lot emotionally. But at La Colombe our culture is everything, and our people and community drive everything we do. We’ve hosted a company-wide meeting to engage with leadership, highlight colleagues, ask questions and spend time with one another. Our marketing team has weekly happy hours to check in and connect, and we set up an internal blog where we share business updates, inspiration and recipes.
What have been the biggest learnings from your efforts during this time?
This has changed the way we think and act. Our team has become incredibly nimble, constantly listening and learning from our followers and customers, and working to add value, and sometimes levity, when possible. As a business, our aspirations and mission statement have remained true, only now we include the word “safely” in everything we do.
We’re continuing to explore how we can help support businesses through this challenging time, and have created resources for how your restaurant or cafe can adapt and respond. You can also visit our Business Resource Hub to see additional opportunities and resources.
Has your business adapted during the COVID-19 pandemic? We’d like to hear from you.
Tags
Related Articles
Interviews ·
How Coffee Retailer La Colombe Adapted Their Business Through COVID-19
Learn from La Colombe’s SVP of Marketing how this coffee retailer adapted their business plans to stay connected through the coronavirus outbreak.
Tips ·
Why Cognitive Diversity is Better for Business
In the latest episode of Three and a Half Degrees, we connect advertising leader Jonathan Mildenhall with social entrepreneur Antionette Carroll to discuss the importance of diversity in business.
Interviews ·
Three Ways to Motivate Employees
In the latest episode of Three and a Half Degrees, we connected two veterans to discuss the lessons they learned as Marines that shape how they run their organizations today.
Get Facebook Business news in your inbox.
Sign up for our monthly newsletter for the latest updates, insights, marketing trends and articles from Facebook.