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The Marketing Reset Opportunity

Turning crisis into an opportunity.

As mentioned by Jon Moeller from P&G (Investor meeting, April 17, 2020), this crisis is a major reset opportunity for many brands and retailers to reconnect with their end customers and gain new ones. Consumers have had to cope with new shopping requirements, new retail environments, new channels. They reacted with new behaviours, trying new products and references, looking for reassurance and quality, changing their perceptions on several brands and their preference structures on many others. This can be a tremendous opportunity for brands to remind consumers of their choices and rebuild Customer LifeTime Value while leveraging the plunge in digital ad prices (Numberly Insights, April 20, 2020).

Illustration: "Some brand we apparently gave an email address to three or four years ago wants us to know they're here for us in this difficult time."

As always, organizations that best and most rapidly understand how to improve the relationships they have with their end customers in this new context will gain a significant advantage in consumers minds. Here are a couple of potential trends we should see in the near future as a consequence of this crisis.

  1. Most customers expanded their digital life, experiencing new channels, new websites and services (from HouseParty to Animal Crossing), and new forms of content or purchase opportunities. A lot of these new habits will continue and should be leveraged in the near future when addressing consumers.
  2. In a crisis, direct customer relationships are a fundamental asset for Brands, and communication to bring valuable information and services becomes critical. Digital is the key to maintaining speed and quality relationships with end customers. First-Party Data collection and digital CRM are among the most important strategic assets of any organization.
  3. Maintaining customer relationships across multiple channels with an ability to simplify consumers life with real time recognition across channels and devices through an identity graph has turned out to be a key component of any customer-oriented strategy. Customers have embraced omnichannel and they expect more than ever to be recognized and addressed in a seamless and customized way across all digital channels.
  4. In tough market conditions, the ability to measure in the most accurate way the value consumers perceive and the value they provide (shared value) and to predict the impact of any marketing investment is even more critical for decision-makers. There is a clear flight to measurability.
  5. Beyond short term value props, consumers favour brands and organizations which walk their talk and can prove actual commitment and impact to solve with purpose the global challenges we all face as humans.

It is way too early to draw conclusions or give precise estimates about the impact of this unprecedented crisis. And maybe the best lesson we’ll get from all this will be a lesson in humility for all our societies, institutions, authorities, brands, organizations and marketing strategies: we need to learn how to manage such levels of uncertainty.