Advertising In Times of Lockdown

World economy is going through a pandemic.... Countries are under lockdown...it's depressing situation AND yet is it right time to advertise? 

Yes! If you are advertising to generate sale for every $$ invested then maybe Not. Yes if you want to connect with your Customers. This is the best time for customer connect, building bond with your users which you always wanted to but never could, due to paucity of time. And the best part is you don’t need to have a fancy strategy to do so now. Just echo the feelings of your consumers, empathize, and share some light moments or better help them with something they would value during lockdown 

With lockdown and social distancing there is a marked increase of time being spent on social and other online media. People are working from home and also running their homes themselves as all support services of every household is away in a lockdown too. Right from Sweeping, Mopping, Cooking, Washing Clothes and the Mother Of All - Washing Utensils. The good part is many of your customers are sharing images and videos of all of these activities on Facebook, Instagram, Twitter, YouTube and more. 

Now isn't it the right time to create conversation with your Brand? If you are a brand, not limited to just, Vacuum cleaner, Dish washers, Dish cleaning gel to anything related to daily chores all your consumers, they will be all ears, as they are doing these activities themselves, they are totally involved unlike the times when they were passively consuming your ads. How about asking them to share their experiences, tricks in a video? Didn’t we always want to have UGC from customers? 

What are the possible avenues? 

Corporate Social Responsibility (CSR) - This is “The Time” to action that CSR plan which you have been waiting to execute. LinkedIn is a good case in example here. Not sure if they would call this CSR but the act was indeed noteworthy. LinkedIn through their employees and set of individuals offered 6 months free access to Premium Subscription to help users who are or likely to be impacted by job cuts.

Influencers - (InfluencerMarketing) to empathize with customers, share some light moments or better give valuable information on something that you help in such situations. Lifebuoy hand wash TVS is not exactly an direct example but surely commendable, where a Doctor recommends regularly washing hands with any soap, though he is using Lifebuoy and using Sanitizers when soaps are not handy. (video link https://youtu.be/zlFhlJ2WHTc ) Dettol and Savlon have come up with similar TVC.

Customer Relationship Management (CRM)- Emailer is the cheapest way to communicate with your existing customers when deployed smartly. HDFC Bank has effectively made use of it. They in collaboration with Indian Express started mailing ePapers when we stopped getting our daily newspapers home. This is a best example of collaborative marketing, hats off to the folks behind this. Recently the bank has created a video to #ThankYouIndia #StayHome #StaySafe (Video link https://youtu.be/cNassLQiaSo ) 

ICICI Bank too was mailing their customer ePapers and they offered more choice to read. Make My Trip was sharing different links to Reading/Videos/Games. Book My Show talking about recent releases now available on Amazon Prime to talking about Movie Trivia. However there were others for whom they still continued with “Business as usual” emails. 

Besides using the CRM for existing customers it’s an ideal time to invite customers who are not regular or non-users. Simple acts like “No Strings Attached” offers would play the best. OTT players like Eros Now are offering two month free access to all their content. Magzter did the same for all of their India Magazine and Newspapers. Zinio offered free access for limited period to over 100 plus International publication of varied interests. It matter of time, once you have the user on board to experience it, they are likely to sign up in the long run. At times like these it doesn’t even rouse suspicion of some fine print somewhere. 

Airlines, OTA & Travel are the worst hit as this is the peak holiday season; yet they are creating content for social along their brand story encouraging their customers to stay at home. 

While it may take a while for things to get to "New Normal". We all need to be together in this to come out as winners. This is the hour to show solidarity with your customers, employees, friends, neighbors, et al. Communicate and reach out.