The spread of COVID-19 in recent weeks is impacting brands in significant ways around the world, challenging both strategies and workstreams across all industries. Frequent cancellations of events one by one served as an initial barometer of the virus’ impact; not just affecting big-name festivals that attract crowds large enough that local economies depend on them, but also smaller activations. The situation begged brands to consider: how can they retain a close connection to key audiences in a time of social distancing?

While the West faces a need to quickly adapt to a new normal prompted by COVID-19, we’re a global creative partner that has serviced clients and areas hit by the virus since its onset in late 2019. Pooling together insights and experiences from teams across the S4Capital family, we’ve put together a report, titled “(Re)Activate Customer Obsession,” that recognizes this moment of upheaval as a profound opportunity for brands to reinvent their strategies and continually reach audiences spread far and wide—perhaps even better than before.

(Re)Define Goals for Customer Obsession

The need for creatively differentiated digital experiences isn’t new; consumer engagement has long migrated toward digital since the rise of ecommerce and social media, with consumers flocking to the convenience and connection enabled by always-on communication and digital personalization.

But for brands that have hesitated to enable these experiences, the trend to social distancing is a wakeup call. “As we come to grips with a world where we can’t shortcut to experience through physical engagement and personal proximity, the challenge is to deliver on the original intent of digital,” says MediaMonks founder Wesley ter Haar. “Interactive, tactile and personalized moments of magic that create conversation, conversion and commercial opportunities.”

To deliver such experiences, brands must invest in customer obsession. Namely, this means meeting audiences where they are—online—and tailoring resources to better prioritize their needs and enhance the customer experience. For many brands, in-person experiences are critical to cultivating a relationship, building a sense of community and driving emotional connections.

On our blog in the past, we’ve discussed the value of such activations—and the need for a digital layer to connect with audiences faraway. If your brand already has an event plan in place, take this as a moment to consider its goals and how that ladders up into your brand purpose. Our report offers a series of thought-provoking questions to help brands zero in on a digital strategy that aligns with their specific needs.

(Re)Group and Replan

Whether you seek to retain value by pivoting existing plans or are simply struggling to anticipate “what’s next,” our report to reactivating customer obsession offers practical advice on how you can begin to reevaluate and prioritize your goals—and where they fit within digital activations. This is essential not only for brainstorming what new experiences your brand can provide, but makes a critical first step in evolving your operations with the digital skillsets and capabilities needed to deliver them.

Having to face an event’s cancellation is tough, because so much work and preparation had already gone into it. Recognizing this, a move to digital can feel daunting—and you’ll certainly find that strategies must shift, and that what worked for a physical experience may not translate well to a live, digital one. But as we’ve mentioned above, view this unfortunate circumstance as an opportunity to make something even better: a deeper investment in digital, for example, allows brands to build up their data capabilities to better understand which experiences are most impactful, and when.

“One of the things we do is in the data: in social listening and finding the right trigger areas in regions where things are happening,” says Aaron Nava, Director of Digital at Circus, which merged with MediaMonks earlier this year. “From there, we’re able to develop a point of view for brands.” Through increased digital maturity, brands have a greater perspective on how to achieve more meaningful, lasting interaction at different points in the customer decision journey, and become more customer obsessed in the process.

Having a clear sense of purpose is key, too. In-person experiences thrive on inspiring an emotional connection through bringing people together and appealing to the senses, and brands must think carefully about how to inject emotion into digital alternatives.

“Brands shouldn’t aim to think about virtual conferences as replacement of what they had previously scheduled. It’s impossible,” says Kate Richling, CMO at MediaMonks. Still, she notes that you can offer some pretty cool (and in many ways, better) activations that are designed to assist your audience and enrich relationships authentically. Drawing from several example digital activations and scenarios, our report walks readers through what to consider in developing such experiences.

(Re)Imagine What’s Possible

Faced with an immense shift in how they must communicate with consumers over the next few months (and how to pivot back to normal, whatever form that might take), we all stand at a critical moment to reassess strategies. But constraint is beneficial to creativity, and we look forward to tackling more unique brand activations that fundamentally redefine consumer relationships. By taking this moment as an opportunity to hone your digital skills and reimagine what’s possible, your brand will be well-equipped to anticipate consumers’ emerging needs both in the near and distant future.

It’s Time to (Re)Activate Customer Obsession.

This week saw the 4A’s CreateTech conference in New York City for a rousing exchange of ideas from creative technologists and leaders in advertising. Focused on technology’s power to provide new forms of storytelling and engagement, this year’s event was focused on the new “Innovation Imperative,” a sink-or-swim feeling faced by organizations who find themselves anxious about identifying the next big thing—or struggling to catch up to the last one.

The conference had a sense of urgency about it, but not without excitement, too. Its prevailing theme was to look past preconceived notions of what’s possible and to view challenges as new opportunities. A shortlist of concerns: What if artificial intelligence threatens my job security? How can my organization reach audiences on cutting-edge channels? How do we anticipate the fabled Next Big Thing?

Attendees didn’t have to wait very long for a solution to these questions. In her opening remarks, 4A’s President and CEO Marla Kaplowitz presented an edict in response to technology’s encroachment into the creative process: “We must all become creative technologists, at every level of the organization.” Easier said than done, perhaps, though with so many bright minds in a room together, plans of action were sure to emerge.

Eschew Fear for Fun

Our very own Sam Snider-Held, VR/AR Creative Technologist at MediaMonks NY, uses the term “techno-wizard” to describe the work that he does: “It’s like being a wizard, but instead of using magical stones and spell books, my tools are VR, AR, programming and machine learning.” In his playful talk “Becoming a Techno-Wizard,” Snider-Held expressed how a personal, creative goal can propel anyone “through learning all the hard, technical stuff” in their way. In essence, creative technologists should have fun.

For Snider-Held, that goal is “technologically-driven lucid dreaming,” or translating environments from imagination to virtual space with as little friction as possible using machine learning. This nod to imagination and play highlights how ingenuity shouldn’t be lost in working with tech. In fact, at a later CreateTech panel on artificial intelligence, event emcee Charlie Oliver and CEO of Tech2025 mused how “Something that’s missing in AI is ‘charm.’” Basically, she says, technology’s status as a black box sometimes leads to a sense of unease for creatives and marketers who don’t yet understand it.

But this anxiety about the changing tech landscape is exactly why Snider-Held suggests everyone empower themselves to leverage for their own goals. “AI isn’t going to take my job,” he says. “Instead, it’s allowing me to spend more time to make cool things rather than do detail-oriented, repetitive work.”

Become a Techno-Wizard

Snider-Held may be right that the closest thing we have to magic is technology, but how does a techno-muggle become a techno-wizard? The answer lies in committing to a constant willingness to learn and expand your (or your team’s) skillset bit-by-bit through an iterative process.

The industry tends to think of innovation and “the next big thing” as a monolith—a disrupting force that must be unlocked. But this view obscures all the little things that made it possible to arrive at the big thing. In his opening keynote at CreateTech, Dr. Kumar Mehta offered a tongue-twisting shift of perspective: “The thing behind the next big thing might be ‘the thing.’” He gave the example of how the invention of the wheel is seen as remarkable, “but what gave it value was the axle, which attached it to a movable platform.” Innovation, then, is an iterative process where one thing leads to another—the big thing is an aggregate of little things. Those who really want to lead in “innovation” must first and foremost treat it as a learning process where experimentation can eventually lead to value.

This way of thinking provides a more approachable framework for adapting to trends: start somewhere small and work up from there. Snider-Held walked the audience through his iterative process of creating a simple tool that performs complex world-building tasks in virtual reality. With just a few gestures, the tool lets you place AI-designed, animated three-dimensional assets within the space.

Just a small experiment born out of curiosity—“What if I could use machine learning to place assets in a virtual environment?”—snowballed into something bigger, resulting in a tool that could help Snider-Held and colleagues design much faster. But the experiment isn’t the only thing that transformed: so did Snider-Held. “I started off being the AR and VR guy on the team,” he told the audience, “but now I’m the AR, VR and machine learning guy.” He also mentioned how such experiments can result in ready-made prototypes that can serve as tangible solutions to new problems, showing how the techno-wizard mindset is as useful to entire organizations as it is for inspired individuals.

In summary, “Don’t wait for opportunities,” says Snider-Held, which really speaks to the over-arching theme of the event. Organizations shouldn’t wait for a big change but continually seek out new ways of doing things. Through this, both organizations and individuals can enjoy a new sense of confidence and enthusiasm to tackling the latest trend challenges.