The pandemic has impacted all parts of businesses, marketing being no exception. But every challenge is an opportunity to learn and build resilience as we move forward. So, we reached out to fellow marketing experts to share their perspectives on the changes they have noticed and how they adapted since the coronavirus outbreak. 

1.  Creative adaptation

When physical doors close, more digital doors open. In response to the limitations presented by the pandemic, creative brand BeeLiked, publisher Knopf Doubleday and author Dan Brown launched a marketing campaign to offer the most personalised and bespoke virtual signing of Dan Brown’s latest novel Origin. The inspiration for this campaign stemmed from the book which is all about technology and AI.

The first part included a design contest where people could submit their designs for the cover and Dan Brown then chose six of his favourite designs. In the second part BeeLiked created the concept of the 'World's First Virtual Book Signing".  The first campaign allowed people to vote on the book cover they liked the most and as a complete surprise they immediately, on the fly, received a personalised welcome by the author. Dan Brown was captured in this personalised video, inviting fans into his home where he signs the book, in his handwriting as well as writing the fans name who just entered. The result was a personalised book with the cover design they just voted on.  

2.     Raised expectations

According to a new report from Havas Media Group consumers expect more from brands than they did prior to the Covid-19 outbreak. The report based on responses from 2,000 people in the UK, reveals that brands’ collective benefits (the role that they play in society), functional benefits (how a product or service delivers) and personal benefits (how they improve people’s lives) have all increased in importance for consumers since the Covid-19 outbreak, with collective benefits emerging as the most important of the three.

On average, 66% of respondents said that the collective benefits of brands are more important to them now than they were prior to the pandemic.  Of all collective benefits, a brand’s good treatment of employees was seen as the most important, with 74% of respondents saying that it mattered more to them than it did prior to the Covid-19 outbreak.

3.     Local community

“For our clients, marketing has got even more locally focused. With less people travelling and hardly any international visitors, restaurants need to focus even more on their local communities, building their brands and loyalty. A good example is what we did with Cotica – an Italian Deli and Firebrand Pizza in Clerkenwell. We’ve used a bike to direct people from Exmouth Market and also created a magazine on Italian food. With a number of Italian restaurants in the area, we wanted to establish ourselves as an authority on Italian food. The magazine included articles on Parmesan, Balsamic and Parma Ham as well as a bit of information on the deli and restaurant. These have been delivered to residents in the area.”, says Guy Holmes, Managing Director of Captivate Hospitality.

4.     Focus on responsibility

“The facts speak for themselves; 78% of directors believe customers are paying more attention to responsible business practices since the pandemic and 72% of the UK population believes that business should have a legal responsibility to the planet and people, alongside maximising profits. Frankly, people care about purpose more than ever before, and certainly marketing needs to reflect this in a post Covid world.

Making your marketing communications purposeful isn’t just something you can switch on overnight though, you need to live and breathe this through your company first; through your business practices, your employee’s ethos, your everyday behaviours both internally and with customers. Only then can you start to tell a purposeful brand story through your marketing,” says Holly Pither, MD and Founder of Tribe PR.

5.     Changing marketing spend

“Since the COVID-19 pandemic and lockdown, we have seen a significant increase in the demand for social media services. Due to the captive audience of people being stuck at home, we have noticed a much higher interaction rate on our client social media campaigns. The home improvement industry for example has been particularly buoyant during this period of time.

During lockdown, we have seen Social Media Management go from being our third biggest service and responsible for just 6% of our revenue, to now becoming our second biggest service and responsible for 17% of our revenue at this moment in time. This can certainly be attributed to the fact that it was estimated that Social Media usage increased by almost 61% during lockdown. We have also noticed that companies who carried out paid marketing throughout the lockdown period experienced a significant drop in cost per click and the cost per acquisition due to the number of companies that simply stopped their marketing. This resulted in less competition and therefore less budget being required for those companies that continued.” Danny Hall, Director of FSE Digital explains.

Charlotte Nichols of Harvey & Hugo agrees: “Social media usage has surged as people have had more time during furlough and have perhaps got themselves into unhealthy habits of always being on their devices. As a result of this more people have been marketing using social media. This has also replaced a lot of typically offline activity such as networking events.”