Should Your Brand Change For The New Normal?
Arguably, the COVID-19 pandemic has caused the most influential, fundamental, far-reaching, and deep-rooted changes than any other disruption in recent history. Every single type of business, organization, consumer, investor, and worker has been affected.
Although we must acknowledge how uniquely impactful this ongoing pandemic has been, and how important it is to ensure that one’s business or organization is prepared to adapt to a very different reality, there is wisdom in understanding how this fits in a larger picture. Talk to seasoned marketers and they will likely tell you how their businesses have had to react to other crises in the past (albeit possibly not as severe nor as life-threatening). Hearken back to the old days, when marketers seriously had to consider including digital and social media to their marketing mix, when they were used to dictating what audiences could watch and where they watched it. When the e-commerce boom was well on its way, well-established brick-and-mortar heavyweights went through troubling identity crises to embrace, rather than fight, the oncoming wave.
And, as with past crises, despite how terrible the effects have been and can foreseeably be, there are always opportunities available for the brands willing to make the necessary changes.
As tempting as it may be to reinvent one’s brand totally to maximize these opportunities, one must be careful and extra-discerning to identify the things about the brand that can and must change, and the things that must always remain true. Yes, we in Wizard believe that there are underlying values that brands must represent and stand for throughout their existence. These are what will enable audiences, present and future, to identify your brand.
Where Your Brand Is Present
The first and foremost thing that must be reevaluated is the set of touchpoints along the customer experience – where audiences can be reached, and how the brand can deliver. The way they can be communicated to might have changed, where they shop most definitely has changed, the dynamics of word-of-mouth have likely changed, and so on.
How Your Product Is Experienced
Your product itself is another possible way to reinvent your brand and how customers can experience it. From packaged food served in themed restaurants, can your customers still enjoy your brand in raw or semi-prepared form? From transporting people, can your moving service now transport goods? From simply delivering items in bubble wrap, can your delivery packaging be used to inspire and delight your customers? There are so many ways that brands can find ways to meet what’s important to customers now. The important thing is to identify what the essence of your brand experience is, distill your product to that, and then embellish it only with what’s really needed.
What Your Brand Stands For
This brings us to our third point, which is not about what brands can and should change, but what must stay true. The underlying purpose – the “why” – of your brand, must stay true. If your brand exists to delight average families with heartwarming meals, then this serves as your North Star as you reevaluate your product portfolio and formats in the face of changing out-of-home dining habits. If you’re a fitness brand that exists to give athletes the confidence to do their best, this should serve as your core as you re-prioritize sports and product categories for shifting tastes. If you’re a bank that prides itself in giving top-notch personal service, you must take this to heart as you re-imagine what it means to provide this level of service outside the confines of your branches’ walls.
Conclusion
Each type of brand and business has its own unique set of opportunities at the present moment, and acting on these is definitely top priority. On a deeper level, it’s important that organizations ask themselves the following questions:
Does my brand have a clear meaning?
Where, and how, can my brand adjust the customer experience whenever expectations change?
Having answers for these, or, at the very least, some idea of where your brand is going, is what will help you keep your ship afloat as you navigate this and any of the new normals that your business may encounter and, hopefully, overcome.
Reach out to us here if you’d like to talk more about how to find what’s most important about your brand to prepare for these new normals.