Not with a Whimper, but a Bang: COVID-19 and a New Planning Era

T.S. Eliot was clearly not having an optimistic day when he wrote the last lines to The Hollow Man — “not with a bang, but a whimper.” A vision of the world ending, and in that ultimate moment of change, that those final moments would be rather unspectacular.

But turning to the present and the context of marketing, as a media strategist and planner, change has always been our profession,helping clients figure out what it means, and building their marketing plans with foresight not just history. And in my career, which began back in the dusty 90’s, change has remained constant, albeit gradual. 

Granted, there's a slight blip in that theory when in that weird July of 2016 you could watch people, clutching cell phones, charging around Central Park trying to find AR Pokémon. Clients scrambled to embed features in their stores to capitalize, only to forget all about it.all about it. But that aside, I'd argue that some of the most seismic moments in media planning — the launch of Google, Facebook, the smartphone — all happened gradually.

Until now. Media habits formed for decades have changed in a matter of days. Was anyone having Zoom happy hours in February? 

But while many media agencies are advising clients on headlines like the 20-40 percent rise in streaming audio and video,, and sagely advising to avoid the obvious ones like billboards and movie theaters, they're missing the point. These are behavior reactions — short term changes driven by a hunger for information or escape, coupled with an enforced quarantine. But watching more content will normalize (except the family subscription to Disney+ which you’ll be stuck with after that quarantine day distress purchase). To me what's more interesting is a dramatic shift in the balance of who and what consumers trust and the role of the emotional connection to that source, because an emotional connection to content or editorial is a critical link to engagement with that channel or media. And that’s what drives effective media plans. 

It was this piece of research that made me sit up. An April 2020 survey by GlobalWebIndex asked internet users in 13 markets questions around COVID-19 and trust. Friends and family, usually the most trusted source now rank eighth, lower than social media. And the government, usually the least trusted, is five times more believed than people you know and love.

Take a moment to think that through. If one of the key sources of truth in our lives has just evaporated, where are we turning? Here's the kicker. Traditional media like print and news journalism. These are now the places that are most trusted and most relied on.

And we're turning to them because we have an emotional connection to them as powerful as with friends and family, but now coupled with a true behavior change — belief in what they’re saying. And those complex and newly minted emotional connections will be the key to a new media planning world. There’s a psychology term for what we’re seeing, called ‘liminal,’ derived from the latin “limens” meaning “threshold.” COVID-19 has changed our current perceptions and decade-long assumptions about “what used to be.” And we’re now in the middle of it,not yet knowing what exactly will come. Not to get too elevated, you could say we’re also in Dante’s Purgatorium, a period where long held beliefs are being ripped apart and rebuilt, which Joan Borysenko discussed in a brilliant video you can watch here.

So what should brands and agencies do about it? I would say, revel in the opportunity. How many briefs have been written in the last year that talked about the need for brand perception change as a key outcome? Well, buckle up, because there has never been a time in recent consumer history when the openness to reassess or change long held opinions is more evident. 

I guess my advice is to use this moment to fundamentally reassess how we think about effective media planning. Instead of assuming influencers are powerful, might we not reassess all channels and contact points with a more complex analysis of emotional connection linking to trust? Critical to this approach will be to stop ranking media just on demographic scale or affinity — the approach used by 99 percent of agencies. 

It also means ending passions-based planning as too simplistic because while some talk about buying media that is “loved” by audiences, that’s still a very one dimensional approach to emotional connection. What about media that they find “innovative?” Or one that fuels “community?” Isn’t that relevant to media planning too? The real approach should be to combine several components of emotional connection, which then generates what I like to call a “humanity affinity” score — one with variables that change depending on the brief, product and audience drivers. 

To do this won’t be easy, and means asking some very different questions to get to what are more interesting planning outcomes.

To quote one of Boston’s most famous sons once more, “the end of all our exploring will be to arrive where we started and know the place for the first time.” That’s how clients should think about media. Stop chasing COVID-19 behavior reactions like the next Pokémon and instead go back to the original basics of media planning. Plan on the complex emotional connections to media channels and the changes that are happening that will be the new drivers to spending marketing dollars more effectively.

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Will Phipps is the SVP lead of Media at Allen & Gerritsen.