Marketing's Role in the Restart
Last week I tuned-in to a webinar produced by the Harris Poll, MDX Partners, and 72nd and Sunny about marketing’s role in restarting the economy after COVID.
The discussion focused on new data from a series that Harris has been fielding weekly since the pandemic hit.
I won’t play back the whole thing here, because you can watch it yourself.
That said, the statistics are new and beg for interpretation.
Here are a few …
Consumer fears (of getting sick, losing a job, leaving home for essentials) over the past eight weeks are high, and holding steady or increasing. Although the virus transmission curve is flattening, the consumer fear curves are not.
Emotional responses are exposing a duality between feelings of appreciation and frustration. Most people are feeling a mix of both thankfulness to front-line healthcare workers and anger at the situation overall.
Illness-related concerns have been massively eclipsed by those related to its economic consequences. Around 1/3 of responders expect their financial situations will worsen despite receding fears of contracting COVID.
So what is marketing’s role in restarting the economy?
It all comes down to what happened to the category the marketer is in.
If your category is doing BETTER (for example, food delivery) during the pandemic, the marketing question for you is - How do I keep my new customers when things return to normal?
If MIXED, your question is - How can I get the customers that I lost, back?
If DOWN, its - How do I get my customers back safely and quickly?
The bottom line is that we, the marketing industry, have big jobs ahead of us in restarting the economy.
Our success or failure, to some degree, rests on how well we answer these questions.
You can watch/listen to the webinar here …
