20 for 2020: Now or Never Moments — The Coronavirus Edition

You: Oh look, another piece of coronavirus click bait!

Us: Umm, yeah, ok.

As we write this the coronavirus impact on western economies and society feels like it’s rapidly increasing. And yes, this might seem like an opportunistic plug for one’s services as many consulting and professional services businesses are going for right now (probably true).

Nonetheless, we think while the new few weeks could involve some pretty tough times for many impacted, whether through their health or the financial implications of an economic slowdown, this time presents some interesting moments for organizations both short and long term that we really believe need thinking about.

We live in a world where incumbents of industries are swarming around the same things as their peers, new entrants are challenging the status quo and societal change continues to accelerate. Many organizations have a short window, a moment, where with courage and guts, they can differentiate.

We call that a Now or Never moment. We might not have expected one of these to be Covid-19, but there you go…

1. Use this time strategically and intentionally — if workplaces are likely to close, as we’ve seen in China and Italy, how might time for leadership and employees in self isolation such as working from home provide time to do the big picture thinking, reflect on where to go next, provide a learning opportunity for them and their employees. Remember the Google 80/20 innovation time out rule, with employees devoting 20% of their time to innovation projects which in the reality of a typical job doesn’t work? Well maybe now is some of that 20% time?
2. Lotteries, it’s time to create a real digital product — People are going to be bored and reluctant to go out to the convenience store to buy tickets — they might not even be open in an Italy scenario. It could be under a quarantine that this is an opportunity to think how might you lighten the mood by providing entertainment and an escape from reality through digital channels currently grossly under served. Make it as easy as possible to buy a ticket online.
3. Digital retail experiences — how can you create retail experiences online to make the most of likely window shopping time, forget the usual concerns about rapid fulfillment (people probably don’t expect next day shipping right now), this is like the new Boxing Day sales event, time for delivery is mostly irrelevant but it’s a chance to explore and find something new. Again, the escape from the potential cabin fever scenario.
4. Watch out for new consumption habits and respond — This time provides a trial for a lot of new activities and we may see these stick such as shifts to more online education, increased e-commerce demand, more work from home policies or different ways of working. Could this be the beginning of the end for the 9–5 routine? In China, we saw companies that might otherwise have laid off labour forces, loaning their employees to businesses experience greater demand — e.g. factories having their employees support retailers and restaurants with the likes of food and grocery deliveries.
5. Airlines are hurting — we’ve all seen the photos of planes flying half empty, and Trump’s EU travel ban probably won’t help either. But if you’re an airline, how do you get people back in the air once this blows over? Where might the cash flow come from in the meantime? The spring and early summer season is likely going to be incredibly slow, but what might this mean to your schedules later in the year? People are going to really want a holiday by then. Also, how can you do something amazing for the people who’ve had to cancel plans recently through fare promotions or surprise and delight opportunities. It’s also worth thinking about what this means for your loyalty programmes, a lot of people are going to lose their status this year.
6. The absence of sport — in the absence of sport and seasons being suspended or even ending early, how do you keep attention on your franchises and leagues? For fans, they might have just lost one of their escapes from reality by cheering on their team. Maybe this is where those esports and video game strategies many teams have (or should have) been creating start to come into their own? With players self-isolating, how can their personalities still be a part of people’s lives through the likes of Twitch streaming?
7. Double down on top of mind categories — Health insurance, e-health consultations, door to door delivery, hygiene products, remote meeting services etc. are all top of mind and waiting for companies to rapidly respond to the situation.
8. Vices and the adult entertainment industry — people at home, time on their hands, there’s a natural source of entertainment — Pornhub are the specialist for this, providing free access to their premium product in Italy. I can imagine that people might be doing a little more self discovery over the next few weeks. In 9 months time, might we even seen a mini baby boom?
9. Time for the banks to show they actually care — for as much as banks spend on advertising saying they care for their customers, now is the time to prove it. Customers are going to experience some financial pain in the coming weeks. How might you look after the gig economy worker that lacks the financial safety net, those on zero hour contracts impacted by less shifts, or small business experiencing a sharp hit on their cash flow. Step up, provide payment relief, offer short term lending solutions at manageable interest rates. Be good people. Ant Financial set precedent for this by adding cover for Covid-19 to all of their customer policies for free.
10. Restaurants to be creative — many have already started to sell through the likes of UberEats or SkiptheDishes, but can you make a delivery service become your primary channel in the next few weeks? In China, we saw restaurants creating semi-finished dishes that customers could finish at home.
11. Figure out a Work From Anywhere strategy — this is as good a time as any to experiment with new ways of working for employees, can they get their jobs done from home, does it impact their productivity, health and happiness? Some businesses will learn their remote systems can’t handle the capacity of workers all doing things from home. Some roles might have been considered previously impossible like this, but perhaps traditional in person B2B sales channels might be about to become much more digital?
12. Schools and alternative education channels — the Chinese education app DingTalk took a hit from kids trying to bring down its rating so they didn’t have to do as much homework remotely during the outbreak. How might schools being closed over the next two weeks provide a learning opportunity outside of what is often seen as a dated curriculum. Let this period be an opportunity of discovery — how might kids have access to books they might not normally get encouraged to read? Can they then come back to school and share their learning with their classmates?
13. The return of the staycation — a boon for Cornwall in the UK, or the Cabot Trail in Canada as people plan vacations that don’t require an international flight instead of heading to more traditional European or Asian destinations. Hotels, tourist attractions etc. should be promoting this now and preparing for what they hope will be a busier than usual season.
14. Good Government — now is a time for strong leadership, there’s some difficult decisions to make, some will say this thing is just like the flu, others are much more fearful than that (perhaps it’s somewhere more in the middle) but being overly cautious with public health is probably the best approach. However, that has big consequences for many, often financial — so how might governments also take the sting out of the impact on business and personal finances — look to defer tax bills, provide relief for businesses impacted, show vision and leadership and think beyond the immediate decisions.
15. Investments & Wealth — the current stock market jitters feel painful for many and markets will likely remain volatile (up and down), the knee jerk reaction for many, often those who feel they have more to lose or less money to invest is to take money out — some might have to to cover the financial impact they feel over the coming weeks. While the common guidance is the be calm, ride out the storm, with many sending communications saying it’s a bad idea to take money out. Wealth platforms need to have empathy for customers who might need access to cash. Instead, could you provide some simple lending products for people that might have lost out with the markets vs. having them eat their immediate losses?
16. ‘Virtual’ Museums — how might other visitor attractions that could become closed find new ways to engage with what could become a captive audience? Perhaps a chance to bring current exhibits to social media, engage people in programming and hopefully drive more visits to the museums when they reopen? Or, are there even old exhibitions on the subjects of previous outbreaks that could be re-deployed for a digital audience? This is a great opportunity for us to learn from the past, while Covid-19 isn’t the plague or the Spanish Flu, many will draw parallels.
17. Climate Change — by no means the first people to bring this up, but if we can be so decisive with this current threat to society, how might we apply big thinking to another big threat to our way of life that has seen multiple governments and business leaders kick the can down the road given the consequences aren’t so immediate in their impact. Many unpopular decisions might need to be made, this event might be a sort of conditioning for us to be more accepting of restrictions on our activities that harm the planet.
18. Society — this thing levels us as people, while we’re all vulnerable to a virus, some are more so than others, how we handle the wealth gap, social care, cohesion at times of crisis. No matter where you sit on the spectrum from thinking this is an over reaction to a time of deep crisis, it is a chance to reflect on how our society works, how we look after the vulnerable and how we treat each other when so much of recent past has been a growing sense of divide or black and white … the reality is there’s much more colour in the grey.
19. A chance to reset — the plan has gone out the window, nobody can say they had this scenario in their planning documents for 2020. When most businesses end up behind plan, they tend to cut what is seen as non-essential spending, more disruptive marketing, innovation, technology investment etc. in order to cut costs and focus resources on short term sales. Now, the plan is out the window, and it will be hard to recover, but this offers an opportunity to double down on investing for the future, what might you be able to do now that was previously impossible to think about? Where might you be able to get ahead of competitors that might not have such courage to invest? Innovation often begins during a recession or economic shock.
20. This all feels very serious now … but don’t fall into the doom and gloom doomsday scenarios. It’s not nice for people having family and friends impacted but people are strong.

Also, some things just make us smile, like this:

Dan Kelsall on LinkedIn: Corona Marketing | 236 comments

The shameless plug — yeah, we wrote this because we’d love to work people and businesses that see this as a time to do something bold, different and new. Find us at nowornever.network & label.ventures.