The pandemic has pushed businesses into the intensive care and most marketers felt it in spades. Brands expect a major shift in the medium and the message. It's a tumultuous time for CMOs. Are marketers ready to take on the new world order?

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The Rise of
Hyper-Contextual
Marketers
Should brands invest in
marketing during the
pandemic?
$12
As companies slash marketing during a
downturn, they leave empty space
Companies that marketed aggressively during the 1981/82
recession had 256% higher sales than those that did not
continue to market. - McGraw-Hill Research study
Spends $18.46 bn/yr on sales and
promotion - and is slashing its marketing
budget by 50% in the 2nd half of 2020
Spends $4 bn/yr on marketing -
has currently paused
non-digital promotions
28% drop in US marketing spend
by the end of 2021 due to the pandemic
When the going
gets tough, the
tough get investing
in marketing.
256%
of startups saw revenue decline
since the start of the crisis - Global
Startup Ecosystem Report
72%
It's a delicate balance
between cutting costs
to survive today &
investing to grow
tomorrow.
in consumers' minds for
aggressive marketers
to make strong inroads.
Higher returns for shareholders over 2007-09
recession from customer experience leaders -
McKinsey & Company
3X
Trillion
2020 loss to global economy
due to COVID-19 - IMF

2. Are marketers ready
to take on the new
world order?
Then why do CEOs forgo
marketing investments
during a crisis?
Product Development
Over Last-mile Promotions
Intutive
Over Instrusive Marketing
Specificity
Over Everything Important
Frugal Marketing
Over Mainstream Marketing
10%only 10% of the non-marketing
c-suite thinks marketing has long-term
strategic focus - The Economist
Understanding gained from new consumer behaviours can go into
improving experience vs. contextualising copies. Companies like
Amazon built strong brand narratives during crisis (Kindle 2 was
launched during 2009 recession).
Brands must go slow on intrusive marketing. Instead focus more on
contextualising the proposition to select set of target audience on
future problems and pragmatic solutions.
Small is beautiful and can help bring empathy in conversations.
Specificity will be the new bravery in brand marketing (25 relevant
audience in a webinar vs. 1000 audience and zero conversations).
Marketers with high-agency thinking and problem solving
aptitude are more relevant and resourceful in the current
context and the imminent future.
Because their marketing team ...
Lacks product vision
and commercial thinking
Lacks alignment with
sales and c-suite
Gets trapped in tunnel
vision and miss the bigger picture
Focuses on agency contract
renewals over outcomes
Prefers intuition
over insights
Waits for
the ultimatum
The pandemic arrived without a playbook,
and most marketers felt it in spades.
TheNewMarketingPlaybook
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