Ways for brands to navigate coronavirus
branding through coronavirus: part two
(Published 23 March 2020 – Life as we know it is grinding to a halt)
Tactical responses for brands suffering through Covid-19 shutdowns
If you struggle to find the time to run your business at the best of times, then no doubt you’re feeling the pinch right now. Me too.
We’re fortunate enough to be in an industry that’s not been hit hardest, but many of our clients, friends and family aren’t so lucky. Just this morning I got a phone call from a mate who had lost his job, victim to the probation period in his contract and the uncertainty ahead of his employer.
🦠😷
We want to help however we can. So here is a list of tactics that might help spark something for the hardest hit industries at the time of writing.
1. Food and Drink
With most consumers confined to their homes, restaurants, bars, and markets are dealing with huge drops in foot traffic.
Survival Tactics:
Take away / delivery. Sure you might not be allowed to host diners but you can still cook better than most people out there. If you’re worried this is going to do damage to your brand, don’t. This is survival of the fittest and your skills as a chef are providing nourishment and support for people’s immune systems and mental health.
Change up your gift vouchers and start selling ‘Dining Bonds’ A group of NYC restaurants launched SupportRestaurants.org, which sells “dining bonds” (discounted gift certificates redeemable after a set time span).
Set up a ‘virtual tip jar’ If you don’t know what Beem It is then set it up (it takes about 5 minutes) Then get your employees to compile a spreadsheet of their personal Beem It handles and share the list to all your social channels and customer databases.
2. Personal Care
As consumers self-quarantine, barbers, manicurists, makeup artists, and personal trainers can no longer get close to their clients.
Survival Tactics:
Rent out your gym equipment. Help your members replicate their gym classes at home, and they might just keep their membership payments going.
Offer virtual classes. Help your members replicate their gym classes at home over Zoom or similar.
1-on-1 virtual appointments. She might be working from home, but my wife is still getting dressed for work. People still need to look and feel their best. Consider a virtual beauty consultation that will offer personalized, 1-on-1 consultations for its clients.
3. Retail
Many brick-and-mortar retailers have been forced to close their doors, whether that’s for good or just until foot-traffic returns is a total unknown.
Survival Tactics:
Sell direct. If you haven’t dipped your toe into eCommerce then now might be the time. Setting up a simple online retail store with a sample of your best selling products can be done in a matter of days. If you keep it simple, hours.
Car boot sale. Remember the days of travelling vacuum cleaner salesmen? Me neither. But this could be the beginning of your most personal shopping experience yet.
Tap into your community. People value their local stores and won’t want to see half of them disappear when all this is over. If you’re in a shopping centre see if you can tap into the Facebook group of the centre, or start your own. The more you collaborate with other retailers around you the better.
4. Events, Leisure, Recreation, and Travel
With large event venues, museums, and hotels on lockdown due to restrictions on large gatherings, performing artists, tour operators, and other hospitality businesses are struggling to stay in business.
Survival Tactics:
Deliver virtual tours. Museums from the Louvre in Paris to the Metropolitan Museum in New York are attracting visitors to their already established digital tours. But live-streaming platforms like Facebook Live and Alibaba’s Taobao Live are making it easy for even small tourist destinations to offer virtual visitation.
Chuck an online concert. The Dropkick Murphys started a trend when they live-streamed their annual St. Patrick’s Day concert instead of performing live.
