Linkedin Article: Marketing Mantra

Article 1 – Did your brand waste this crisis?

(Adapted from Brand Equity, Published on January 12, 2021) 

‘Never let a good crisis go to waste’ words by Winston Churchill has again being tested against time! How your brands took an advantage of the Covid-19 induced economic crisis?

The sentiment & statement was recently echoed by RIL chairman Mukesh Ambani were in a conversation with Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg last month, he expressed that ‘a crisis is too precious to be wasted’. 

The tough times led to an explosion of the digital ecosystem across, even in India. It has enabled many entrepreneurs to launch companies built purely on digital. Across the globe, there’ve been some brands that have quickly re-invented business models or pivoted, not only to survive but to increase their sales and even create more jobs. And for some crises have created great opportunity - Airbnb’s launch during the 2008 crisis for instance, or China’s ecomm giant Alibaba - for whom the turning point came in 2002-03 with the SARS epidemic – as it convinced millions of people to try shopping online.

While every recession is marked by characteristics relative to that era, vis a vis how brands have been impacted, and how both consumers and brands have reacted to adverse situations, the 2020 pandemic has been an intense introspection period for every entity. And there’s been an intense desire to connect deeply with customers. The following characteristics of brand promotions came into limelight z

1.      Unified emotions- the big opportunity

• Despite the dips in ad spends, some brands have actually amped up their messaging to maintain brand saliency, while others have recognized the confinement-led increase in eyeballs, as a good opportunity to launch new campaigns.
• One of the buzziest new campaigns of 2020 in fact, was that of CRED, a two-year-old Fintech startup, which saw its customer base double to about 5.9 million in 2020. Experts feel that the brand’s humour-tinged films - that used celebrities from the 90s in an endearing self-deprecation mode, set the brand apart from regular pandemic-focused messaging.
• The pandemic brought everyone together, in the same space. Usually, it’s all so scattered when people are in different spaces and mindsets, but currently, we have a mass of people feeling similar emotions.
• This leads to a massive opportunity because very rarely do human beings come together like this. Experts add that one basically needs to envision a brand as a person- such that it talks to people the way we talk to each other in these times – with concern and empathy.

2.      ‘Don’t go off air’

• As per the media experts, this is simply the worst time to go off air. BrandZ India’s shows that the brands that have grown in shareholder value from ’19 to ’20 in India have also gained more than 20 pts on salience.
• Consumers come back to the market and when they do, they gravitate towards brands that have remained salient in these times. They will come back with “lists” and spend less time to browse and buy and that’s why Mental availability will be key to unlocking share..
• Also, at the onset of Covid-19, consumers expected brands to provide emotional succour, but now expectations center more around the practical demonstration of utility. The key is to be empathetic - and while at it, be careful to balance the old codes of inclusion with the new growth of tribalism.

3.      Back to the core

• When times are good, all teams are engaged in seizing the market- relentlessly. There’s no time to think about reinvention, streamlining of processes, and weeding out of bad models, bad systems, and bad ideas. But Covid has definitely made every brand re-focus on ‘who they really are, or want to be’.
• Experience from experts narrates that ‘when the pandemic struck, we had to think long and hard about what was important to us as a company. We went back to our roots - driving people to people connections, powered by technology’
• If in the journey, one loses the map, going back to the compass – should be the core mission. By focusing on things that progress that mission - even when it’s different from the original plan, companies can build deep connections with their stakeholders and come out of a crisis much stronger.

4.      ‘How you make customers feel, will be remembered’

• When Covid resulted in companies having to make tough decisions to survive this uncertain period of demand, several of the start-ups were clear that while they needed to make tough calls, they would be fair and empathetic to those affected. Even if these resulted in less-than-optimal business decisions in the short term.
• Many Sequoia-funded companies focused on their passion. BYJUs made their app free for students who suddenly found themselves out of school and without support. Zomato and Rebel Foods channeled their partner kitchen capacity to make food available for the marginalized.
• Each one of these companies could have instead chosen to cut costs and hibernate till things got better. Entrepreneurs shares that “We all believed that while customers and employees may be willing to forget what we say and do, they will certainly remember how we made them feel during this time of crisis.”

Read more at -https://brandequity.economictimes.indiatimes.com/news/marketing/did-your-brand-waste-this-crisis/80225113

Article 2 – Top marketing trends to watch in 2021

(Adapted from Brand Equity, Published on January 08, 2021)

The wide-ranging customer responses to COVID-19 since months, have given some insights into the marketing trends that are working in this new normal and what you can expect in 2021…

The shift in business operations was the limelight of 2020. It is a challenging task to predict what B2B and B2C marketing and sales will look like when we enter the post-COVID-19 era. The COVID era has seen more goods and services moving online and many employees will continue to work remotely or in a fusion setting for much of next year. The following trends are expected in the coming days & months – 

1.      Conversational marketing: 

• The pillars of marketing, trust, and brand loyalty are becoming more connected, conversational marketing is going to continue to be an important factor in a successful marketing strategy.
• At every touchpoint, consumers should be able to talk to the brand and get a response which lives up to his fair expectation.
• With this, make sure your business’s contact intelligence is easy to find. Also,
• Chatbot- AI technology is continuing to lead the future of marketing as they cater to any number of consumers at one time.
• Every customer-facing department needs to embrace conversation and make the customer feel part of the brand – with a human touch too!

2.      Machine-led Disruption: 

• AI and MI are one of the buzziest terms used by every brand and marketers alike in today’s world and it has a very broad connotation.
• AI and Machine Learning can pretty much manage media planning and buying on their own and large enterprises are working on this via their AdTech and MarTech projects.

3.      Visual/Experiential:

• XR is also known as an extended reality that includes AR/VR/MR technologies that will revolutionize how we consume and create content in this decade.
• Marketing has gone beyond just advertising on different platforms. It is where customer experience is strategized and implemented across different touchpoints.
• With AR/VR/MR evolving rapidly and in this new world order of experiences from home It is important marketers take a serious look at these technologies for their brand.

4.      Brand Transparency and Social Consciousness:

• In this digital world, transparency on social media is more important than ever before.
• Social media acts as a medium for brands to directly engage with their consumers, people are seeking out brands they can trust more frequently, so being transparent will help the brand to gain the trust of more users.
• By being transparent and socially conscious, a brand can deliver a message to consumers that they want to hear, and come across as honest.
• Honesty is a lost quality in marketing and it is something that customers appreciate.

5.      Data privacy and respect:

• As marketers data is gold but; customer privacy is the most valuable commodity in the online space.
• It is important brands respect privacy and customer data and use it judiciously.
• Any communication brand that does use data should be beneficial to the customer and should never invade privacy or come across as intrusive or overburdening.

Read more at - https://brandequity.economictimes.indiatimes.com/news/marketing/top-marketing-trends-to-watch-in-2021/80145943

Article 3 – Organizing for the future: Nine keys to becoming a future-ready company

(Adapted from McKinsey, Published on January 11, 2021) 

The article summarizes how to better organize for a post-pandemic future, where leaders should embrace nine imperatives that collectively explain “who we are” as an organization, “how we operate,” and “how we grow.”

In this article, McKinsey & Company has incorporated lessons from experience and from new research on the organizational practices of 30 top companies to highlight how businesses can best organize for the future.

While no organization has yet cracked the code, the experimentation underway suggests that future-ready companies share three characteristics: they know who they are and what they stand for; they operate with a fixation on speed and simplicity; and they grow by scaling up their ability to learn, innovate, and seek good ideas regardless of their origin. By embracing these fundamentals—through the nine organizational imperatives that underpin them—companies will improve their odds of thriving in the next normal.

The below exhibit shows the degree to which 30 top US companies are already making or considering bold moves across the imperatives. 

Read more at - https://www.mckinsey.com/business-functions/organization/our-insights/organizing-for-the-future-nine-keys-to-becoming-a-future-ready-company