brand
relevance

Outlining issues and practical strategies to help businesses tackle the COVID reality

stay active, stay needed

Brands that can imprint themselves in consumers’ minds now can ensure staying power through the current reality and whatever comes next.

download the blueprint

For brands, COVID-19 and our reckoning with racial inequality have presented the ultimate tests of character.

Business have the chance to adapt their tone, take a stand in becoming better corporate citizens, pivot their marketing and social strategies, take better care of their employees and earn attention and affection in new ways.

Staying relevant

your response really matters
Missteps during a crisis—such as tone-deaf advertising—can have tremendous consequences. According to Qualtrics, one third of respondents say that a brand not using the crisis to maximize profits makes them more trustworthy.
be relational, not transactional
Relational brands use credibility, reliability and intimacy to create trust, which 76 percent of CEOs say will be critical to business competitiveness in their industry in the next five years.
consumption isn't dead, but it's changing
For years, we were what we owned, what we drove, what we wore, what we ate. Those ideas are now challenged—along with other symbols we once used to define our place in the world like nationality, religion and community—because what we buy and why we work have become more fluid.
Accenture
Relevance—The Beating Heart of a Business

 $1 TRILLION IS LOST IN POTENTIAL REVENUE ANNUALLY DUE TO BRAND SWITCHING IN
THE U.S. ALONE. 

THE CHALLENGES and Responses

VISIBILITY
PERCEPTION
TRAJECTORY
Missteps, such as tone-deaf communications or promoting a purpose without meaningful action, during crisis can create negative perceptions and have long-term financial implications.
Companies that lagged behind competitors in building an online presence or digital capabilities will need to catch up quickly (with potentially fewer resources).
In the wake of COVID-19, many organizations, especially those with business models focused on in-person interactions, will seem irrelevant.
FORM RELATIONSHIPS
MAKE IT MEANINGFUL
HAVE A PLAN
Presence is about more than visibility. It means identifying your customers’ needs and figuring out how your brand and product can play a meaningful role to address them. This allows you to deliver value consistently. As consumers pare down their consumption, brands who identify their purpose and use it to form true relationships with their customers will emerge from “there for you” to the much more powerful “there with you.”
Make your purpose meaningful through action. Companies can only compete on purpose
when that purpose permeates the entire organization and leads to meaningful measures. Moreover, the meaning must be present in every product, service, image and word. More than half (60 percent) of customers find it critical that a brand demonstrates its values with authenticity in everything it does.
Have a multistep crisis response plan. Address how your team will deal with external crisis, so you can take meaningful action quickly. Since mistakes can happen, however, have a plan to handle internal crisis or crises that come from miscommunication. Quickly own up to your mistakes and create a clear path for moving forward, consulting with voices of the people affected by your actions. Don’t be afraid to take extreme measures to demonstrate long- term accountability.
get the blueprint

Download  "Adapt and Transform" now.

Visit Hot Paper Lantern →

© 2020 Hot Paper Lantern