Vaccines are being rolled out, and hopefully, we’ll remerge blinking into the outside world after what feels like a long hibernation. While we’ve all been locked down and investing in new loungewear, brands are sitting up and preparing themselves for the post-COVID world. Or at least those with both eyes on the future are.
We’re talking here about more than brands just simply continuing in the same way they did in the pre-pandemic world. Instead, the emphasis has to be on-brand creativity, innovation and being strategically prepared to provide consumers with what they want.
If you’re ready to give your brand a spring clean and stay ahead of your competitors, keep reading. Here’s what we think brands can do while waiting for the world to start turning again:
Acknowledge the World Has Changed
We’re not having a deep and meaningful moment here. We simply mean that for brands to meet consumers’ needs, they have to accept that audiences have increasingly turned towards buying and accessing products online in the past year.
Practically speaking, this means it’s essential to tailor and repurpose shareable, memorable and personalised content to be used across all existing channels: web, social, videos, stills, and blogs. Ideally, content can be repurposed to fit new channels, so a TikTok video is repurposed for Instagram Stories, or a video becomes a blog and so on.
We’re all about shaping and reshaping SEO friendly content, so it gives audiences what they’re craving: experiences, knowledge, fun, engagement and more.
No Mind Reading Needed
Rather than either second-guessing what audiences are thinking or making broad-sweeping assumptions, now is the time for brands to update their strategy by gathering insight into their audience’s pain points and what they’re thinking and feeling and addressing those points. Here’s what our audience told us about how they think about 2020 and lockdown 1.0 when launching the new Amazon Prime series Wild.
By embracing change, brands can adapt their strategies to provide personalised and meaningful content in a post-COVID world. Responsive companies are already doing this by demonstrating to customers how they’re responding to COVID-19.
There’s no crystal ball in the ZAK office that will predict if post-COVID audience behaviour is going to change in the long term. But what there is a responsive and proactive approach to audience engagement.
We’ve got SELFHOOD, and White Paper, our global and diverse network, holds no punches U30s. The brands we work with have unprecedented access to the next generation giving them insight fuelled fodder for their future campaigns.
With insights, brands can learn from 2020 and come out stronger on the other side.
Show They Care
The pandemic has struck consumers of all generations. There are multiple column inches devoted to people’s experiences. If brands want to demonstrate they care, it’s time to build incentives into their brand strategies.
We don’t mean giving the entire stock away. Just a few lovely personalised deals. That, and content that tells stories that their audience can feel an emotional connection with. Have a look at our work for Barbour’s Beacon clothing range. It’s the story of two independent lads back in their hometown of South Shields.
Localisation
Lockdown has meant most of us have spent more time in the communities we live in. The nature of how and where we access our information has changed, moving towards local social media pages and supporting independent and local businesses.
Brands who want to capture that mood can build trust by localising their brand strategy to include more personalised and tailored marketing via social platforms and sponsoring local events to raise brand awareness. It’s another way brands can stand out from their competitors while being in the same local space as their audiences.
Staying Ahead
Finding a brand strategy agency that understands you, your products, and your target audience is an innovative and creative way of staying ahead of your competitors.
As a next-generation brand strategy agency, we’re familiar with shaping and reshaping content and turning cultural chaos into clients’ creative brand strategies. Try us for size.
