AWith the lockdown extension due to Covid-19, brands struggle to market their customers and they are really confused about the uncertainty of the situation. From the insights gathered from the old recession period brands know that it is not a good idea to turn off the advertising taps.
According to the Harvard business review article of the recession-era of 2008, ‘How to market in a downturn’, it is wise to contain costs but failing to support brands or examining customers changing needs can be a very dangerous reason for the failure of long-term good performance. Although we cannot compare the recent situation with the recession, the issues faced by people like financial hardships and lack of sales is similar. A survey was conducted by Adobe Advertising Cloud over 1000 global consumers and 500 brand marketers to examine the current views on how brands are reacting, advertising, what consumers are looking for, and whether there is an opportunity for the marketers to ensure continued success. Almost 90% of consumers need advertising that is relevant and useful.
From the survey, it is analyzed that genZ can still be a luxury brand target demographic. Almost 40% of Gen z requires luxury or non-essential brands being targeted to them even though they are the most affected by the economic challenges due to Covid-19. More than half of the millennial is found to go online for shopping compared to pre-Covid-19 situation. And 48% of the full-time employed people do the same, thus by targeting them brands can succeed.
The going trend of advertising is brands being showing how much they are engaged with the communities and how they help people. Visual mediums see an increase in their ad with connected TV and Video making an average of 32% more. It also is seen that two-thirds of the Americans turning to trusted premium content more than pre-Covid-19. Brands can target traditional viewers through their ads on news channels, but it can reflect negatively, as the viewers won’t like to see a brand with Covid-19 news.
Thus, brands must come up with new strategies by analyzing the data, building robust customer profiles, target them, and succeed accordingly. And they also have to work upon training their marketing team to adjust their strategies to fit the current situation.