Brand & Product Marketing for a New World.

We’re talking about how brands will need to pivot strategies to work with society’s COVID-19 Post-Traumatic Growth.

Albeit scary, the inevitable shift in culture, economy and business processes could be viewed as an opportunity to re-evaluate our strategies. The organisations that plan and act now will forge their place in the post-pandemic landscape.

Change is upon us and proactive planning will be the difference. Without being alarmist, we’re quite possibly witnessing a transcendent moment in our history.

The uncertainty about what a post-pandemic economy may look (or indeed function like) is largely guess-work (at the time of writing).

How brands adapt to an evolving humanitarian crisis like COVID-19 will shape their position in the new economy. Some will survive, others will sadly cease. How we plan to pivot strategies, propositions and market our organisations begins now.

We’re exploring societal & psychological behaviours over the coming days & weeks, in an attempt to better frame what may happen next. Planning for the unplannable — a reality we’ll all need to accept.

Behaviourally speaking we are still in the midst of our collective anxiety — still in the downward spiral.

Sadly, that’s largely an uncontrollable behaviour born of our most primitive and irrational brain — yes, that will be all the panic buying.

In an attempt to look beyond toilet roll and pasta anxiety, we’ve been looking at how consumers might evolve when the situation ‘levels-out’.

We’ve been exploring how Post-Traumatic Growth may evolve our shared narrative, our worldview and our decision making in the near future.

Post-traumatic growth (PTG) is a theory that explains positive personal and societal transformation following trauma. A term developed by psychologists Tedeschi and Calhoun, in the mid 90’s.

As a brief overview; the theory indicates that we are likely to experience a positive psychological and cultural shift as a result of our current social trauma.

Trauma is a seismic event for our belief system, and more specifically, it shapes the core beliefs that make up our worldview.

We believe brands will need to be mindful of how our assumptive worlds may be shattered and force consumers to re-evaluate their core beliefs.

We may find ourselves starting (if you haven’t already) to ask questions about our long-held individual beliefs — These are what form our assumptive world.

Beliefs such as:

• How benevolent are people?

• How predictable are events?

• How controllable the world is?

• How vulnerable am I?

• How capable am I?

• What type of person do I want to be?

It would also be a fair to expect this to extend to collective behaviours in organisations ‘post-pandemic’.

Our organisational cultures will likely have an adjusted approach to judging brands, suppliers and/or business partners.

Perhaps these questions will become even more important than they used to be:

• How benevolent is this company?

• How predictable were they in the crisis?

• How ethically do they act in the ‘new’ economy?

• How vulnerable do they appear to be in future crises?

• How capable are they in mitigating risk in similar crisis situations?

• Do they align with my/our renewed personal/professional worldview?

We believe these are questions marketers and brand managers could be using to re-frame and possibly re-evaluate in-market and forward marketing strategies.

A Positive Takeaway?

One likely result from post-traumatic growth could include a substantial uplift in prosocial behaviour — helping, sharing, donating, partnerships and volunteering.

A prosocial culture will undoubtedly create a healthier professional and personal climate. We believe brand and marketing managers should be taking this time to evolve and pivot strategies to align closely with this possible shift in culture.

Our ‘self-obsessed’ western consumer culture may look very different, very soon.

We’re only human after all and if this tragic and difficult situation has taught us anything, it’s how fragile our society and our economic infrastructure really is. We’re far more vulnerable than some would have cared to admit.

We’re always keen to evolve our thinking and strategies, we would love to hear your thoughts on how you plan to pivot your marketing strategy. If you haven’t got a plan yet — we would like to help. (In a prosocial way of course).

We’ll need to build a different tomorrow. Together. That starts today.

If you’re a forward-thinking human/marketer — follow our LinkedIn page for our next insight update on our changing behavioural landscape.

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