It’s time to acknowledge the elephant in the room: during a time of instability and hardship, should brands halt their advertising and go dark? Data shows that most consumers still want to hear from brands, but their message should be focused on building value. Still, even the idea of what constitutes as an appropriate response varies day-by-day and by location, highlighting the need for brands to invest in truly understanding their audiences and how they can lend support to them at speed.

In fact, brands who continue to invest in advertising spend throughout a recession tend to benefit by experiencing revenue gains that persist beyond its passing. 44% of consumers plan to delay purchases until after the COVID-19 outbreak has ended, and brands must use this time to prepare for the inevitable need to quickly grow following significant revenue loss throughout the pandemic.

Still, brands must consider whether spending makes sense. “Traditional advertising response is spend, spend, spend,” S4Capital Chairman Sir Martin Sorrell told audiences in conversation with Ad Age. “But when companies are facing existential crises in Q2 and not sure if they have enough money to survive, it’s ridiculous.” Instead, he recommends that those in tech who planned campaigns and sponsorships for canceled sporting events “should divert that spending to doing good, purpose-driven campaigns. But those campaigns should be highly practical–equipment, vaccine development, therapy–supporting those on the frontline. It shouldn’t be self-seeking. You have to encourage clients to deploy their resources more effectively and divert money into digital because that’s more effective.”

Still how do brand ensure their focus is on providing real, authentic value to audiences in the coming months? The secret lies in redefining the role of the brand in consumers’ lives and being proactive to their shifting needs in a disruptive landscape.

Invest in Insights-Driven Creative

“In the first couple of weeks, data suggested that people didn’t want to hear from brands,” says Andre Rood, Global Advertising Director at MediaMonks. “Afterwards, you saw them slowly get into the mindset, as long as brands were being helpful.” He notes how brands’ initial response to the coronavirus from felt so repetitious, with so many brands reiterating the same message: wash your hands for 20 seconds and stay at home. They weren’t differentiating or cutting through to individuals’ specific needs at the time.

Now more than ever, customer obsession is critical to brand health.

MediaMonks Founder Wesley ter Haar notes that in reacting to COVID-19, it’s more important than ever that brands invest in personalization, or they risk looking insensitive. This prompts brands to consider personalization beyond the typical categories of demographics and user preferences. Instead, they have to dig deep into the nuances of what their audiences are dealing with, and the myriad ways that the brand can help.

“The COVID curve is different everywhere, even affecting people differently who live in the same community,” ter Haar says. “For some that means looking for a cure to boredom—but that messaging is insensitive for a family of six that is homeschooling while working from home, who are too busy to be bored. It’s never been more important to actually understand who you’re talking to.”

Rood echoes this sentiment by cautioning that brands shouldn’t rely on the standard segmentation methods, which currently offer little relevance. “The way you should target individuals should be totally different now,” he says. Mood triggers, for example, can help a brand tailor the most supportive and relevant message to audiences whose experience with the pandemic can wildly differ.

Test New Production Solutions at Speed

The speed at which the COVID-19 situation can change also poses a challenge to brands focused on keeping connected with their audiences throughout the full scope of the pandemic. For example, a brand might be set to launch a campaign, only to find that it’s suddenly no longer relevant. In addition to offering a dynamic campaign as mentioned above, brands must employ rigorous testing to understand how people are responding to creative week by week.

“Due to the fact that this is moving so quickly into unknown areas, brands must be able to galvanize and shift content immediately,” says Patrick Kirby, Digital Strategist at MediaMonks, noting that becoming more agile is essential to success.

Ways to do this include repurposing archival material for legacy brands who have it, turning to quick and versatile animation as a production alternative or encouraging UGC and influencer content to build community engagement. Each of these approaches enable brands to reallocate budgets or refresh existing content, but more importantly, they can do so at speed.

Redefine the Brand’s Role

More than simply continuing to advertise to consumers with conversion-based content, now is a good time for brands to truly focus on building brand value and becoming more purposeful. For example, while brands should tread lightly in approaching the current moment with humor, there is value in using creative to lift spirits and boost morale.

There’s a lot of talk too about how manufacturers have done substantial good by shifting operations to produce much-needed masks, hand sanitizer, ventilators and more. This approach isn’t practical for many—for example, smaller or mid-sized brands. But there are still opportunities to get creative in how you leverage your channels and platforms, like HP and Folding@Home’s initiative that encourages users to donate a fraction of their computing power to aid in the research toward a COVID-19 cure.

Such approaches are rooted in customer obsession, in which brands pool together resources to listen to the customer and deliver upon those needs. Willemijn Jongbloed, Digital Strategist at MediaMonks, notes how Nike was able to adapt well to offer value to consumers under quarantine thanks to its customer obsession strategy. MediaMonks has partnered with the athletic brand and Wieden+Kennedy to host a weekly series of livestreamed workouts that get people active and moving despite staying at home.

“When Nike moved into events, that was a bold move at the time, but now you can clearly see the many sides of the brand. In a time when people have largely stopped buying clothes, they have created the ability to move into online events, and thus can instantly serve their audience in a different way.” What makes the experience powerful isn’t just the product itself, she says, “but the full story around it—including all benefits, use cases, mindset and emotional connection that will set a company up for success.”

That drives home an important point for brands as they seek to engage with and support consumers over the next few months. Wielding brand voice in a global pandemic isn’t a matter of simply keeping your name out there or driving conversions; it’s also about building trust, becoming more purposeful and experimenting with more agile ways of working. As brands hone these skills now, they’ll emerge from the other end of the pandemic stronger than before, and their audiences will come to appreciate those efforts.

Capping off a raft of regional and global event cancellations, the International Olympic Committee announced that the 2020 Tokyo Olympic Games will be postponed until next year. The announcement is toughest for the athletes who have worked so hard over the years to qualify and compete in the Games, but it’s also tough on audiences–many desperate for entertainment amidst social distancing, seeking something to unite under and look forward to.

As brands rethink their Olympics media and advertising strategies, they must consider how they can still continue to connect and inspire today’s consumers. While the Olympics’ postponement certainly throws a wrench into brands’ advertising strategies for the summer, there’s still opportunity for them to refocus plans and offer comfort and connection to audiences who need it.

Earlier this year, The Drum estimated that the Tokyo Olympics and Paralympics, among other major events, would drive global growth in ad spend by 3.9% in 2020. Now, brands are wondering how they can reallocate their budgets—or their big ideas—to next year, shifting plans that were made months, if not years, in advance. This includes not just traditional campaigns, but also in-person and in-store activations intended for attendees. Here’s how brands can kickstart and rethink and rebuild their strategies for 2020.

There Are Still Big Needs to Fill, But Strategies Must Change

While many brands might aim to reallocate budgets and current strategies to next year, there’s still a real need to keep relevant—and customer needs aren’t going anywhere, either. “This doesn’t mean brands can stop engaging with their audiences this year,” Michel de Rijk, CEO APAC at S4Capital, told host Dan Murphy on CNBC’s Asia Squawk Box. “They need alternative plans.”

The possibility that social distancing will remain into the summer—or that consumers will hold onto new digital habits and behaviors that are emerging right now—will elevate the role that digital must play in alternative campaigns and creative experiences. “A lot of these activities that marketers were planning to do were in-store and offline activations,” de Rijk said. “But because of that change in user behavior, those now need to be digital. You’ll see a lot of innovation in this space.”

That said, there’s no direct, one-to-one translation of an Olympic experience from in-person to digital: imagine mingling with people from around the world and being inspired by watching the games in-person. Brands certainly shouldn’t copy and paste existing strategies to a virtual space, but they do have an opportunity to innovate by blowing out specific parts of their narrative.

For example, consider how messaging around the Olympics usually focuses on determination and coming together as a global community—a message that resonates well with a world transformed by a pandemic. It also sits well with what digital experiences uniquely achieve. “By the nature of digital and creating these virtual brand engagements, [brands help] entertain audiences no matter where they are and have the power to bring them together within a shared experience.”

For Resonance and Relevance, Play Toward New Consumer Behaviors

Digital behaviors have shifted significantly over the span of the past few months, and we still can’t say for certain how the landscape will look months further down the line. Brands must be proactive in recognizing shifting needs, behaviors and priorities for today’s audiences to strategize and refocus their efforts on supporting their audience.

One way to do this is through social listening to stay up-to-date with what matters most to your audiences and to identify new ways that they’re connecting with one another. This attention toward social can also clue you into interesting, new user behaviors that you can tap into to find value for consumers—like “cloud clubbing,” in which DJs began livestreaming their sets to at-home audiences in China before COVID-19 made its way west.

By remaining up to speed on conversations and emerging digital communities, brands are better prepared to connect with audiences in meaningful ways. For example, without live sports to watch, consumers are gathering online to compete in video games (or watch others play via livestream).

We Look Forward to More Innovation—and More Voices

While digital transformation has widely been a slow and incremental process for some brands, it’s become clear so far this year that strong digital maturity is essential to continue meeting audience needs. And that importance isn’t just temporary: “I think what you’ll see in 2021 during the Olympics is a blend of the original plans that [brands] had scheduled, as well as the learnings that they are having in the coming 12 months in a forced virtual environment because the consumer behavior has changed,” de Rijk told Asia Squawk Box.

And without attention focused on a single global event, there’s more room for all brands to connect with their audiences. “The brands who decided not to have a lot of activity out there during the Olympics because of the sheer amount of activity happening through Olympic advertisers now have the opportunity to get it back,” says de Rijk. This means even small to mid-size brands can look for ways to break down and build more impactful experiences.

The postponing of the Tokyo Olympics presents a double whammy: brands not only have to strategize again on their messaging in the summer when the games were originally meant to take place but will also want to apply new learnings to their Olympic plans for next year, too. By aligning strategic goals with emergent consumer behaviors, brands adeptly pivot to engage and support their audiences in better, value-added ways.

To Keep Up with Consumer Needs, Double Down on Customer Obsession