Marketing highlights what brands can do for you to make your life easier and solve your problems. It highlights that some brands make you feel better about yourself and boost your confidence — drinking Coca Cola makes you happy, driving an Uber makes you rebellious and sexy, etc.
The concept of marketing value proposition always takes a customer’s problem and shows how a brand can solve it. The Great Pause we are facing today has presented us with unseen problems — our normal life has been taken away. Not only the emotions have been affected, but the psychological well being of our families and us.
This is a new challenge for companies and marketers, and as we are soon (hopefully) starting to exit the crisis, we will begin to see new marketing value propositions. Here are 6 possible elements of future messaging strategies:
1. Desire to go back to normal
Psychologically we all want the normal situation in the world to come back. We want to be able to enjoy our lives the way we used to. Companies and marketers know that this will be a good button to press and we will probably start seeing messages that encourage people to Just Do It (again), Because You Are (still) Worth it.
2. Safety sells
In the past, we talked about safety mostly in the context of terrorism or crime-level. Some travel locations were safer than others, for example. Future marketing messages will talk about safety from a different angle. Customers will go to a restaurant if they know that the place is responsible, the workers are using all possible means to stay clean and healthy and distant. A few months ago it would have been weird if Airbnb talked about cleaning the apartments on their front page, but cleaning and #disinfection will remain essential to make customers feel safe.
3. Contactless
If you can provide your product or service to your customers without any human contact, you have a considerable advantage. Not only during the pandemic situation, but it will be an important value proposition in the world after as well to make people feel safe. So the #contactless will remain popular in future marketing and companies will work very hard to be able to use this tag on their messages.
4. Support your locals
#local will become sexy again. Marketers have previously worked so hard to convince us that the best food comes from your local providers and eventually people are starting to buy this concept and — most importantly — are willing to pay more money for local products and services.
5. Supporting the elderly
CSR programs now have a new area where to focus on — elderly care. This was hidden behind climate topics and charity for cats, dogs, and babies. The Pause has shifted our priorities and we will be seeing many marketing messages and projects that are related to elderly care and supporting the strength of communities and families.
6. Everything is online
This is no news. It is the time to finally acknowledge — if you are not online, you don’t have a future. This may even not be a part of marketing messages anymore, because being online is a hygiene factor that customers expect to get by default. We expect companies to go deeper into their business models and figure out new ways to make money if you are not able to offer your product or service physically.
As the economy will start getting its speed back and marketing people can do their job again we will start seeing lots of fresh strategies/messages and hopefully, we will notice lots of positive trends. What hasn’t changed is the fact that as consumers we should be careful and critical about how and act responsibly to the messages that are presented to us.