The Museum of Public Relations is collecting materials related to the public relations industry’s response to the COVID-19 pandemic and its sudden disruption of lives around the world.

Our goal is to document all aspects of this crisis from the perspective of agency and corporate practitioners so future generations can understand what it was like to live through this period and draw useful lessons from it. We are partnering with some of the industry’s foremost organizations to bring you this collection—The Arthur W. Page Center for Integrity in Public Communication at Penn State University, the Institute for Public Relations, the Page Society, the Public Relations Council, and Grady College of Journalism and Mass Communication Department of Advertising and Public Relations at University of Georgia, United Airlines, and Edelman.

History Responds

In 2001, the New York City Historical Society launched a project called History Responds to capture the history that filled the city’s streets, homes, and businesses in the days following the attacks of September 11. Since then, History Responds has documented other events of historical importance as they unfolded. The Museum of Public Relations is emulating this effort with the Historical Society’s generous agreement. We plan to tell the story from the perspective of agency and corporate practitioners. And we will begin with the COVID-19 Pandemic.

COVID-19 Pandemic

We're interested in items related to the pandemic, quarantine, and vaccination efforts. What items—no matter how modest or mundane—tell the story of your response to the COVID-19 pandemic? Some examples may include:

• Marketing communications directly related to the pandemic, e.g., product shortages, new offers, or advising customers on alternatives to in-person service

• Research you conducted or depended on in your COVID planning

• PR plans and strategies you offered your internal or external clients

• Guidance and communications you or your company gave employees

• Artifacts, such as branded masks and signage, you created and distributed.

The material collected will become a multi-media repository from which scholars, students, and practitioners can draw best practices. Of course, if any of this material is sensitive or proprietary, we can embargo it from public viewing for a specified period. This collection will give future generations a sense of what these times were like, and what could be learned from it.

While we all hope it will be generations before the world faces a pandemic of similar scale, we believe many lessons learned in recent months will have application in other crises, such as cyber-attacks on critical infrastructure, runs on financial institutions, and other widespread disruptions to daily life.

To tell these stories, we need your help. Consider donating a meaningful item today. Please use the form below to begin the donation process of contributing artifacts to this historical archive and to tell us how to reach you if we need more information. We can’t promise to accept everything, but all donations will be reviewed carefully by a panel of senior practitioners and academics. And donations accepted for the archive we are building will be credited to the donor.

Sample Contributions: Communication in the Time of COVID

Have questions? Need assistance? Reach us at HistoryResponds@PRMuseum.org