As businesses try to make sense of the constantly changing landscape that Covid-19 has imposed, more and more it’s falling to Marketing in general and the CMO in particular to step up and drive growth. And that’s going to be tough. For three reasons. Firstly, investment everywhere is down; the FTSE is around 20% down from March and most plans for spending have either been diverted or scrapped as budgets are reallocated or frozen. Secondly, everything has changed. The pandemic has led to a dramatic and very possibly permanent shift in the needs, priorities and opinions of your customers.
• For many, brand loyalty has been replaced by thrift and value for money.
• Everything that could go online has, and anything that couldn’t has fallen by the wayside. Amazon reported a 26% uplift in sales in Q1 of 2020 compared to 2019. No prizes for guessing what that means for retailers everywhere.
• Home is no longer just where the heart is; it’s where the office, the shop, the school, and the social life is.
• Our world has got smaller, local neighbourhoods and community welfare are growing in importance for many and the needs of the individual has become front and centre.
Thirdly, and here’s the rub; at a time when marketing should be given increased support and priority, many CMOs are finding that they are being sidelined by leadership focussed on stabilizing the business.
In a recent survey by McKinsey, 61% of respondents said that how a brand behaves during the crisis will have a large impact on whether they’ll continue to engage with it once the pandemic passes.
So delivering a strong sense of brand purpose — what you believe in, the principles that guide you, how you do things differently and where you look to make a difference — is vital. The key word there is delivering. Just saying isn’t going to be enough. You’ve got to deliver it day in day out. At every point that your customers come into contact with your business.
And make sure that your organisation is walking the walk. Be authentic. Brands who have tried to jump on the Covid bandwagon with no real positive action to back up their claims are suffering at the hands of their customers’ social media.
So please don’t start banging on like you’re Mother Teresa. No one likes a phoney. Remember that the projects you take on, the partners you work with and the messaging you put out all reflect on your organisation’s brand. Choose them all wisely.
Never forget your internal audience.
Things have changed for your staff too. Many of them will be scared for their future and their health. Make sure your internal communications are compassionate, inclusive and reassuring. Where you can let everyone know that there is a plan for recovery and that they are part of it.
Keeping your valued talent engaged, involved and most importantly safe in the knowledge that they are valued will pay dividends in the future. You’ll be glad they’re on your side when the time comes.
Firstly, get the rest of the board onboard. They need to understand the vital role that Marketing is going to play in driving growth by making sure that your organisation has messaging and comms which are relevant, intelligent and empathetic. Then make sure that your messaging and comms are relevant, intelligent and empathetic. Use any and all available analytics to really understand any shifts in your customers priorities, opinions and needs. The pandemic has accelerated emerging trends in every market, if you can spot the next ones early, you’ll be ahead of the game.
You’ll most probably have to reach you customers in their homes. Are you using the right channels? The home environment presents a whole load of new opportunities like gaming, digital assistants and multi screening.Without coming across like a home invasion, embrace them all. Speaking to individuals at home rather than using mass market channels gives you the chance to speak to them as… individuals. Wherever you can customize your messaging, products, services and even pricing to suit their individual needs.
Most marketers will have got used to planning 12 months ahead. If the last 12 months has taught us anything, it’s that at the moment, that seems largely irrelevant when the situation is changing daily. Building agility into your planning is key. When no one knows whats going to happen next, having a bunch of possible answers ready to deploy makes a lot of sense. Setting aside small budgets to run lots of innovation experiments, spinning multiple scenarios at small scale will mean you’re ready to invest in scale when the right solution presents itself at the righttime. Light many small fires and see which one takes hold.
Fight the urge to scale back or even abandon marketing activity during the crisis. History tells us (and so does Peter Thiel by the way), that brands that continue investment during a recession are off to a flying start once things lighten up. “The critical metric that determines the level of a brand's market share growth is its excess share of voice (ESOV), defined as share of voice (SOV) minus share of market (SOM).” In other words, if you want to grow and recover, you need to make some noise.
You don’t have to reinvent the wheel every time. You might discover you need many small course corrections not one enormous pivot. But you must have an open eye on trends and key indicators and a full heart to make bold changes in your marketing and to hardwire flexibility and change into your organisation.
Open eyes and full hearts. Sounds about right for these strange days. Because change is not just necessary, it’s inevitable.