• by Maarten Albarda , Featured Contributor, March 4, 2022

Earlier this week I posted a heartfelt plea from a former colleague of mine, who is Ukrainian. I hope you saw her post, but if not, here is the link. And my friend Tetiana is not the only person I know in Ukraine.

A whole nation is being destroyed by one country declaring war unilaterally on another sovereign, democratic country.

Imagine for a moment you are the managing director of an advertising agency. You have struggled through COVID just like the rest of us, with Zoom and Teams calls, people working from home, clients trying to figure out how COVID is impacting their business, and therefore their marketing, and so on. You are managing the great resignation and pitches and all other aspects of your business. And then the bomb raid sirens started going off.

Or you’re the marketing director of a brand. You have a bright team working on campaigns, driving and tracking conversion and consumer sentiment, developing content and media placements, and all the other things you do. Until you wake up to the sound of artillery explosions.

Or you’re the CEO of a SAAS provider with clients who are mostly abroad. What do you tell your clients about why the office cannot be reached, and the deadlines you promised that may not be realistic anymore?

Or you’re the commercial director of a media company. You offer TV, radio and internet channels. Except… networks keep going in and out. Your TV tower is bombed. Your journalists struggle to determine what is rumor, and what is truth, and how to get the message out. Or to report at all, because, you know… you are living in a bomb shelter, or you are actually a soldier now yourself.

Imagine that everything you take for granted as your normal life is all of a sudden upended, with no clear line of sight if it will ever come back. Who cares about work life anyway, when your very survival is at stake? Schools, universities, hospitals, supermarkets, gas stations, Starbucks... name ANYTHING you rely on to get you through ordinary everyday life. Imagine it gone, with no clear idea of how and when it might return.

Instead, you are explaining to your children why you are going to spend another night in a subway station with thousands of others -- or why you find yourself in a makeshift shelter in a school gym in Romania or Poland, while your husband, their father, did not travel with you.

That is the Ukraine right now. I know the people I just described. They are there. It is unimaginable.

#StandWithUkraine