As Society Changes So Will Your Marketing Plan

by  Brian Wieser, Global President, Business Intelligence, GroupM

We review changes relevant to marketers that will occur as the coronavirus crisis evolves.  We specifically consider new ways consumers will spend time, how they will change media consumption and how B2B marketing will evolve.

In assessing the behavioral changes following from the current crisis that will impact marketing, we must lay out our assumptions regarding the path forward for the virus and societies around the world alongside our expectations for the evolution of the economy.  

In general, we can assume that while containment efforts will generally be successful in most countries and that the phase of the crisis involving country-wide formal lockdowns will come to an end, risks of further outbreaks will persist until a vaccine is both discovered and widely distributed.  As a result, while there will be a gradual and at least partial resumption of many pre-crisis behaviors over the course of the next year, a complete return of old social patterns will not occur any time soon.  Because of the sudden shut-down and related disruptions in economic activity, we can also assume the economy is likely weak for the foreseeable future, with a disproportionate impact on workers in retail and hospitality sectors who tend to be lower income.  Any concentration of negative outcomes among certain groups of people could exacerbate existing trends, which could play out in public policies related to populism, global trade and taxation among other issues.

For all of these reasons, it is reasonable to assume that some behaviors will permanently shift because of the time people will have had to get used to new patterns and because of the new products and services that will evolve to meet changing needs between now and then.   From here, with an eye toward identifying the behavioral changes from societies under lockdown, the changes that will follow as society gradually opens up and the changes that will follow once a vaccine is widely distributed, are worth noting.

Following from these assumptions, in the remainder of this note we consider three general groups of behaviors relevant to marketers, including ways consumers will spend their time and money, how their media consumption patterns will change and how work – which impacts B2B marketing in particular – will evolve over time.

Societal changes seem highly likely to occur as a consequence of the current crisis, and consumers will change the ways they interact with people and brands for the foreseeable future.  While many behaviors will revert to historical patterns once a vaccine is discovered and distributed, there will be many that will become permanent.  Brands have opportunities in the interim to find new ways to become relevant or maintain relevance.  They will also be able to find new ways to be tangibly helpful as consumers adapt to the new behaviors they will adopt.  Planning for those opportunities now will help brands drive growth in the future as economies eventually and inevitably improve.