Will Brands Need to Reposition Post-Pandemic?

Somber piano music, empty streets, Zoom socializing: there have been so many near identical brand commercials that a compilation emerged.

No surprise there: how brands behave right now will either be a wind in their sails, or it is going to haunt them for a really long time, and some of them, such as Everlane and fashion influencer Arielle Charnas, learned that early on and the hard way.

Buying into vs. buying from
Brands trade in aspiration, and aspiration is a narrative: it is the stories we buy into and the products and experience we buy to be part of these stories.

Not so long go, modern culture symbolized individualism, independence and freedom through iconography of FOMO — fear of missing out: constant travel, outfit changes, and festival and fashion circuits.

But the script flipped overnight.

FOMO has gone, and consumers lean more towards the narrative of redemption by restraint.

Journalists, public intellectuals and New Jersey senator Cory Booker claim that a better world will come out of our hardship.

Famed trend forecaster Li Edelkoort even went as far as to announce that we should be “very grateful for the virus because it might be the reason we survive as a species.”

Brands discovered two things.

First, they need a more coordinated and less siloed approach to their marketing.

Severe marketing budget cuts are at odds with the imperative of maintaining a relationship with their customers.

One way to keep it going is through inter-departmental collaboration and reliance on each other’s strengths. This is a more resilient brand model, where marketing works in sync with operations, logistics, finance, customer service, and internal and external communications.

Second, brands need to adjust their narratives.

As a culture and a society, we were unprepared for this crisis because our national heroes are soldiers and warriors.

Our social heroes are nuclear scientists and tech inventors.

Our cultural heroes are influencers and celebrities.