Have you felt powerless in fighting the juggernaut called the COVID-19 virus? The past few weeks have been like a gigantic slap in the face of everyone, especially small business. A lifetime of work threatened not by a menacing Germany or Japan of the 1940s but an invisible killer inside our borders and now in our heartland.

I’ve experienced the fear of the unknown, and while we’ve found no cure to COVID-19, we’ve opted to create a cause. What we did know was that our small business was an award-winning communications company and that we could use our skills to muster a pro bono public service campaign to play a role in a response to the crisis. The idea was to give families huddled inside their homes some beneficial ways to deploy kindness to replace hopelessness across an entire region.

With three primary cities in our home in Northeast Tennessee and Southwest Virginia, known as the Tri-Cities, our creative team found a natural message that would resonate with consumers… TRI Kindness. Personal and selfless actions can cure a side effect of the virus—fear.

Numerous studies have found that when socially anxious people offer others acts of kindness it helps them overcome their fears. Other studies have found that kindness triggers the release of serotonin inside one’s brain that plays a role in mood stability. Another found that kindness boosts the body’s immune system. Through social media, our goal is to create collective behaviors for a region that offers support to small business, displaced workers, restaurateurs, the elderly and each other.

In the course of a week, our team built an integrated broadcast, digital, social and PR campaign, sought and secured free airtime from regional media partners and launched. You can monitor and participate in the new movement at TRIKindness.org.

We pray for a quick cure to the coronavirus and an even quicker cure for our way of life and economy. While researchers do their part to spark a recovery, the men and women of Creative Energy are waging our war against fear. We call it TRI Kindness.