Volume 18: This is not a message from our CEO.
1. An enlightening tale of St. Bernard and a Dick.
Tl;dr: LVMH shows that doing the right thing is always the right thing to do. Sir Dick Branson, not so much.
For all their much vaunted speed and agility, it wasn’t a tech company that was fastest to demonstrate leadership into the current crisis we face, instead it was Bernard Arnault, chairman and CEO of LVMH, which is the world’s largest luxury goods company. Just 72 hours after making the announcement, they transformed their production lines in France from luxury cosmetics to hand sanitizer for distribution to healthcare professionals. A small but swift act of life-saving leadership that is possibly the greatest branding masterclass that will ever be given. (Side note: Those repurposed Christian Dior sanitizer bottles are going to be highly sought after collectibles in a year’s time)
As a counterpoint, Richard Branson was finally shamed into aiding his employees after everyone at Virgin Atlantic was pre-emptively furloughed with 8 weeks unpaid leave. For anyone who didn’t already know, this is the same Richard Branson who spent his entire career preaching that it isn’t the customer that matters but the employee, states that the true differentiator at Virgin is its people, and has a goal for his Virgin group to “change business for good”
Had he followed his own advice and stated goal previously by dipping into a fraction of the personal wealth his employees have created for him, then the goodwill and leadership would’ve been immense. Instead, he’s been shamed into it because of the potentially terminal impact of the bad publicity.
If there’s a meaningful branding lesson to take from this crisis, the comparison between St. Bernard and a Dick is it.
2. “Message from our CEO” and don’t forget to use coupon code #COVID19 at checkout.
Tl;dr: Panicked marketers are abusing our email addresses.
If you’re anything like me, you’ve experienced an exponential growth in utterly useless and frustratingly banal emails over the past week. While most are incredibly well-meaning, that doesn’t mean they’re very effective. Let’s do a quick breakdown:
Genuinely useful information about services, closures, policy changes or things that are actually helpful to know.
Useless “message from our CEO” emails that forget a golden rule of communication, which is that the person being communicated to matters a lot more than the person doing the sending.
Truly bizarre attempts to use the pandemic to sell SaaS products (thankfully without yet mimicking the parody #COVID19 coupon code). I suspect these are from the same “growth hackers” who’ve anointed themselves pandemic experts on Medium.
Random emails from businesses I bought something from once 30 years ago telling me they’re here for me. It’s taken you a while, but better late than never I guess.
Finally, and these are my genuine favorite, automated emails offering deals and promotions on products that were clearly programmed before the pandemic hit. I quite enjoy blithely browsing these emails full of products I have no intention of buying for a few minutes and pretending to be back in a more innocent time. Like two weeks ago.
Being serious for a second, this is a really good time to remember that restraint is a virtue. If you don’t have a good reason to talk to people, then don’t. And if the only reason you can think of for blasting your email database is to make your CEO feel better about themselves for having to work from home with their cat, then please don’t. Of all of us, your CEO will be just fine.
3. Marketing's job isn’t tactical nonsense today; it’s creating the confidence to consume again tomorrow.
Tl;dr: Beyond the crisis, marketing will be one of the most valuable skills in the days ahead.
The temptation in the midst of any crisis is to think that it will last forever. The current pandemic is no different. As horrifying as it may be, it too shall pass.
While we’re seeing a varied slate of marketing moves right now, some great, some awful, the true task for marketers lies ahead. It’s the necessary preparation that needs to be done to lift the economy on the other side. Only by restoring confidence in consumption will the wheels of commerce move again, speeding the economy's ability to mitigate the current toll. And this is a job that marketers are uniquely skilled to do.
Because the current economic shock is so asymmetric, there are industries that will go dark by necessity. Hoping their cash positions, balance sheet strength and government assistance will be enough to see them through, while at the same time others are actively accelerating investments as structural shifts that may otherwise have taken years are now happening all at once.
But for all, there are two critical strategic questions that need to be asked: “What good can we do to create confidence in us on the other side?” and “when is the right time to begin re-encouraging consumption?” Rather than ill thought through demand-gen now (cough, SaaS “growth hackers”) maintaining brand strength through thoughtful actions and considered communication will be critical. People aren’t going to respond to “buy now” requests today, but they will remember the brands they trust the most once the crisis over and they desire nothing more than to put it behind them.
4. Rite-Aid goes all-in on millennial wellness-babble.
Tl;dr: Drugstore re-tools for customers who don’t shop there.
Finally, in pre-crisis rebrand related news, Rite Aid recently announced a strategic shift to modernize and transform their pharmacy and retail businesses, including an odd new logo and a fairly generic concept for the store of the future.
Beyond the logo, the stated strategy is to create a wellness focused pharmacy and store experience tailored to the needs of "millennials and generation X”. Having read through the weird wellness-babble of their investor presentation, which looks like it was written by a second-rate consumer innovation consultant with a subscription to the worlds worst stock photography library, people other than grinning millennials in mid-leap are conspicuous by their absence. Does this mean they think today’s absolutely dire retail experience appeals to boomers? Because I’m pretty sure it doesn’t appeal to anybody much. Or much more dangerously for them, do they think that boomers no longer matter?
A quick internet search shows that relative to competitors CVS and Walgreens, over-50s are more likely to shop at Rite Aid while younger customers are not. If we add the concentration of wealth in the over-50s, the increased likelihood of their requiring prescription medicines due to age, and a known predilection among boomers to buy both in-store and online, simply ignoring them really doesn’t feel like the right strategy to me.