First of all, how are you? I hope you're all healthy, safe and managing as best you can as we head into the second half of 2020.

In the weeks after the COVID-19 pandemic hit, we were flooded with marketing messages— from social media and digital advertising, to television and print ads. My inbox, like yours, was flooded with emails from every company I'd ever done business with—and many I hadn't. Every organization I'd ever given my email to—voluntarily or otherwise—seemed to be reaching out to connect with me.

Some notable standouts aside, most of the content repeated the same message over and over and over again, until it became an indistinguishable cacophony of content. The messages of "we care about our clients and customers," more often than not followed by a low-key (or not-so-low-key) sales pitch, came off as hollow at best in the face of the devastating health and economic effects of the virus. Some of the messaging was flagrantly opportunistic, as a number of organizations treated the global pandemic as a marketing opportunity.