SAN FRANCISCO — Leaders from Carbon and Flexport — two companies that have stepped up in response to the Covid-19 crisis — joined PRovoke Media and the Bulleit Group to talk about the role PR and marketing have played in building trust during this crisis. 

In this discussion, Carbon CMO Dara Treseder and Flexport's Raman Deol join the Bulleit Group's Kyle Arteaga to talk about authenticity, building trust, leadership, employee engagement and more. The conversation was moderated by Aarti Shah.

Highlights include: 

"The conversation is shifting—reporters are no longer as focused on the really interesting founder or company valuation. They’re focusing on substance, they’re asking hard questions. How are you fulfilling your promise? That’s been something that we, in the startup community, had to reckon with over the past 12 to 18 months. With COVID, it’s really ramped up.” - Carbon CMO Dara Treseder  

"What has really changed is the incoming interest in the supply chain, which has gone from relatively null — from a consumer perspective — to very top of mind. In that regard, we dealt with similar challenges. The Frontline Responders Fund that Flexport.org started had a lot of big name donors, so started receiving a ton of incoming interest. So, we had to take a step back. We only have so many spokespeople, so much bandwidth. How do we capitalize on the right opportunities to reach the right amount of people? We also want to keep our donors, customers up to date with what information is relevant to them." - Flexport's Raman Deol 

"Use this time to build out your content asset, use this time to reconsider your executive platforms. Maybe the way that you were positioning a certain executive wasn't right, maybe there’s a new executive? Maybe the people responsible for your supply chains should be taking a more prominent view in the public eye? Perhaps there’s that one person in finance that has been doing some great community impact work that should be your focus for the next few weeks, if you have a reticent CEO. But reset expectations. The goal is to show survival and then business resilience, not necessarily to get a bunch of inbound press—unless you have the right story." - The Bulleit Group's Kyle Arteaga