The great re-opening: how brands can spring forwards
As the southern hemisphere winter changes to spring, the last few weeks have also seen a shift in our approach to Covid. All levels of the Australian government have moved from avoidance to acceptance. As we shift from a Daniel view to a Gladys view, Aussies are about to discover that living with something is different than living away from something.
Even if it means watching the world’s most isolated capital city host an AFL granny out west, while we make posters to support the Racism. It Stops With Me campaign from afar.
It will take a different mindset to shift out of a fortress mentality that is grounded in avoidance and attachment, to an acceptance mentality where we recognise that we must live with something permanently. Kinda like Geelong coach Chris Scott growing his hair out to deal with the inevitable decline of his kitty cats.
There are different forces at play when any person or society starts the process of transitioning towards acceptance. The base question to ask in any changing situation is, are you anxious? Helpful hint, everyone is, but some deal with it better than others. The better variable to examine is whether the effect of the anxiety will be low or high depending upon what it attaches to for you. For example, has a trip to the local shops which used to be a chore now become something that is giving you a complex? Do you avoid the feeling it gives you or do you embrace it? As a society, we now need to learn to do the latter. We are either going to do this securely and collectively or it will preoccupy us and tear the fabric of ‘us’ apart.
Acceptance
Acceptance is best thought of as experiencing events fully and without defence. It is in the submission to what is rather than what you hoped for that freedom is found. The rub is that it takes a period of transition as you move from one state to the other. The ability to transition is the hardest skill to master for any individual, company or country. Why? It means facing the unknown and, generally, takes leadership.
Anyone who surfs will understand that getting onto the wave is the most challenging aspect of the sport. Three variables: the wave, the board and the rider, all in different positions; motions and momentums brought together under two feet in one moment. The surfer needs to know where to be to catch the wave as it builds enough to start to break, have the ability to create space under their chest for their feet to land, and the self-belief to trust that where they look will guide their board down the line.
Australian businesses will also have to prepare to land multiple variables into one achievable plan as we finally transition into what comes next. There are other countries to help us look down the line into a future of new positions and new value.
From being affected to being effective
There are many areas of brand that will need to shift into a ‘new normal’, from how an organisation adds a view on vaxing to its purpose, to how its positioning shifts to create more value in a reshaped world of digital delivery, from what brand architecture adjustments are needed to incorporate more services, to how it needs to shift its employer branding to deal with the multimode workday.
Fortunately coming second in the race of reopening and lagging behind the field entering the last lap has its advantages. We can see what is working and what is not. So how can brands spring forwards into this new reality? They need to understand the effect covid has had on positioning, employer branding, architecture and purpose.
Effect on positioning. Changing a brand’s positioning is often portrayed as the need to rebrand. In reality, brands are rarely redone from scratch, they are often merely refreshed through updated assets. But as a tool of business, they must reposition properly to meet the needs of the market to create value. The digital age, over the long term, is broadly depressive on any company’s margin, so finding new value through a meaningful subcategory, rather than cost-cutting, is the playbook of any above-average business leader. Take for example drug companies who with the medical effectiveness of mRNA now demonstrated are about to enter a potential ‘golden age’ of drug discovery. They will need to reposition (rather than simply rebrand) towards underpinning the societal understanding of this new technology and creating clear category codes. Much like how Apple was the first luxury technology brand with world-leading margins, it is going to be interesting to see which mRNA brand codifies its way into premium leadership.
Effect on employer branding. The pandemic has put paid to the notion of 9 to 5 face-time cultures. The 9 to 5 grind was born of a post-war world of command and control where men primarily divided tasks. Covid has finally disrupted this work culture and we are moving towards a work world shaped by our modern reality, always-on technology. Companies are responding by turning their attention to how to lock in the productivity advantages found during the pandemic while retaining the culture they fought to build before it began. The truth of the WFH revolution is it only enhanced the advantage of the most talented who, freer from distraction and restraint, produced better work. The new working world is what Harvard Business Review calls an asynchronous world where tasks are completed across shifted time in disparate locations. This is enhancing productivity, but it relies on a living culture where responsibility is shared and tasks are clear. Brands who built their employer brands on great premises, high proximity to power and collective action are being replaced by something new. Early signs from Atlassian to Unilever point to further flexibility, clarity on lived values rather than claimed values, and a move away from ‘workatainmnet’ options like free dinner for those working late to more rewards and fewer hours for those who deliver more in less time.
Effect on architecture. The pandemic has truly put paid to the notion of omnichannel. There is now one channel, the customer. Aided by smartphones companies can now seamlessly follow the customer and deliver multiple versions of the same thing. Who thought we would live in a world where you could get drive-thru food delivered to your door or get Cornflakes across four different channels from one retailer? While convenience is king, it is forcing all businesses to consider how they structure the value. Take edu.com where digital delivery is no longer kept to the ‘online’ division of a university but is about bringing as much as you can under an all-powerful brand. Leading universities like Stanford already approach their architecture in a manner more akin to a content-driven media company than a staid redbrick institution of higher learning. They are like Disney. One compelling centre brand surrounded by powerful franchises.
Effect on purpose. Businesses already grapple with their role of moving from profit-generating to profit plus. The pressure comes internally from employees (talent has choices), from sources of funding (cleaner businesses with fewer skeletons deliver better ROI) and from customers (in the age of inequality your most profitable customers can ‘shop’ their values). Organisations are now being asked to have a view on vaccination as it relates to what they do. Contractually they can demand it from staff, but customers are slightly different. If your business relies on interaction with people, talking about vaccination is almost business critical. Airlines like Delta and Qantas are already out the gates as it makes sense for them to talk about vaxing equalling the freedom to reconnect (all to an emotive soundtrack). Things will be trickier for those who have less of a social purpose or where social interaction less intrinsic to their day-to-day actions.
Do you expect your energy provider or cloud service to have a view of your vax status? These will be questions we all grapple with during the great reopening. As with anything fortune will favour the reasoned rather than the reactive.
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Be better to each other.
