Ask not what your country can do for you.

How the world has changed in a week.

What’s happened? What will happen? Not clear.

This piece might be out of date in a week, or a day.

What is clear is that this is a time for brand leadership, and brand bravery.

It’s not a time for panic buying, or panic selling for that matter. It’s not a time for working out how you can turn this crisis to your advantage. It’s not a time for short-termism at the expense of reputation, or finding desperate short-term patches for loss of income. It’s not a time for knee-jerk downsizing, firing staff or offloading assets. It’s not a time for cancelling everything and hoping for the best.

It’s time to think differently, by thinking first about what you can do to help.

Do you have assets that can be repurposed — from factories to office space to products to hotel rooms to logistics networks to stores to ad inventory to staff?

Are there programmes you can adapt to reach people differently? Or groups of people that your existing programmes might suddenly find useful (or essential).

Is there a pivot you can make that will make you newly relevant, valuable, useful?

What can you do to help? Because only helping now will make you valuable, relevant or admired when all this is over (or, as seems increasingly likely, when our new reality has set in). As so many have pointed out, this is the moment when ‘brand purpose’ becomes real. The moment when we’re tested to live our values not just speak them. And that means taking risks, spending (or losing) money, being brave and generous. It means living through this crisis with people, as an ally.

After all, brand building doesn’t stop when a crisis happens. In fact, the stakes are higher. Imagine yourself, your organisation, your brand in a year’s time. How do you want to be perceived? Be that, and be it now.

Ask not what your country (your community, your customers, your staff, your supporters, your world) can do for you. Ask what you can do for your country.