The global coronavirus (COVID-19) pandemic has led to improvements in the advertisement, marketing, promotional, and media budgets, forcing businesses and brands to re-evaluate their outlook on current and potential advertising and marketing strategies to retain a stable revenue stream.
In these times we all are ensuring the social distancing and all other precautions which are necessary to stay safe and healthy. There are few people whom we are still living closely – our family members as we trust them without much thinking of Social Distancing. Brands are also focussing on Trust and Empathy as values and are basing their campaigns accordingly
Earlier the focus of the positioning message for any brand was simply the product or the target market or sales. Now companies are focussing on Empathy based messaging
Now, communication is insightful, supportive and marketers are careful not to be seen as opportunistic and exploitative. Brands are aligning marketing with “new” core customer values – Protection, Safety, Comfort, Health, Hope and Trust.
For example, the latest campaign by Ford. As soon as the company realized the need for a radically altered message amidst the coronavirus pandemic, they came up with 2 ads that highlighted the history of Ford and the latest CSR activities – talking about Protection and Safety.
Whereas Jeep came up with the ‘stay off the road’ campaign, which is contradictory to their usual ads, to advertise the concept of lockdown and social distancing and thereby emphasizing on SAFETY.
Another great example is of Coco-Cola, where they have made an extension of a 2002 Coca-Cola ad to combat the Argentinian Great Depression motivating them with the message ‘We will get through this’ talking about Hope.
Also, advertisement by Dominos focuses on Trust, where they mention that their employees are delivering every order of pizza. And all Dominos employee follows four rules to ensure safety and hygiene and focusing on Zero Contact Delivery.
https://twitter.com/dominos_india/status/1258349785645412353.
Similarly, many brands came up with different positioning messages keeping the theme of Covid-19 in mind.
