How to Adapt Your Brand During COVID

Covid has made us all adapt overnight to the way we inter­act, work, raise our kids, shop, clean and eat, and with it, how we con­sume infor­ma­tion. And brands are no exception. 

It’s been strik­ing to wit­ness brand adapt­abil­i­ty: how quick­ly COVID has been  incor­po­rat­ed into ads, pod­casts, social media mar­ket­ing and print. Brands have become more aware, empa­thet­ic and respon­sive to the very real strug­gle caused by this sud­den local-to-glob­al about-face. By focus­ing on the needs and well being of their clients and employ­ees alike, brands are now shift­ing and demon­strat­ing their val­ues, which in turn is chang­ing their brand identity. 

In fact, this has been a spon­ta­neous oppor­tu­ni­ty for brands to set a new tone at a time when all are look­ing for anchors, famil­iar­i­ty and com­fort. Peo­ple are lis­ten­ing… so what brands are say­ing, doing, and endors­ing has nev­er been more important. 

How to Adapt your brand during covid

Learn From Brand Adaptability

One of the best ads we’ve seen is The whole work­ing-from-home thing — by Apple  They cap­ture a dynam­ic so many are expe­ri­enc­ing now— inno­va­tion and deter­mi­na­tion while work­ing in the unique envi­ron­ment called home! 

While this ad may not cov­er everyone’s sit­u­a­tion, it has taught us to see beyond state-of-the-art offices, appear­ances and frills and see PEOPLE. And as a women-owned busi­ness, we’re hap­py to see that they chose a father as the par­ent fig­ure nav­i­gat­ing the dif­fi­cult bal­ance of work­ing from home with kids. 

It’s sig­nif­i­cant to see so many brands grow more human­ized in response to real adver­si­ty. What can you learn from them to apply to your own work and brand? A LOT. 

It’s About People’s Needs

The brands that now aim to make their audi­ence real­ly feel under­stood rather than say­ing, “Here, buy my prod­uct,” are the ones that can sur­vive — and even thrive. We know Apple was show­cas­ing their prod­uct abil­i­ties in that video, but they did it in a way that focused ful­ly on people’s unique sit­u­a­tion and needs, with­out lean­ing on con­cepts of “these dif­fi­cult times” or  say­ing “when things get back to normal.” 

Tru­ly lis­ten­ing to the needs of your audi­ence and demon­strat­ing that you have is not just pow­er­ful — it’s become nec­es­sary. This is one sil­ver lin­ing — and it can be for you too, whether you’re a big brand, a small busi­ness own­er or an inde­pen­dent con­trac­tor. But how?

How to Adapt Your Brand During COVID 

Here are three ques­tions to ask yourself:

Where are the new needs with my clients and in my field? 

This is the top thing to pur­sue. Our recent blog post on Empa­thy Map­ping will help to get you there.  Also, keep an eye out for new ways to con­tribute to solu­tions based on what you feel in your own life as a con­sumer.  By expand­ing this way, your client base can increase, and you will find new ones — a rem­e­dy if your pre-covid client base has dropped. One exam­ple, shoe and fash­ion design­er Steve Mad­den was one of the first to come out with masks, that came with PM2.5 fil­ters, and offered packs of 5 replace­ment fil­ters to order online. He cre­at­ed a whole new client base on that alone, his well-known brand pro­vid­ing a trust­wor­thy source for fil­ters while being an act of pub­lic service! 

What can I do with my tal­ents that will fill that niche?

Draw­ing from watch­ing big­ger busi­ness­es morph, how can you reimag­ine the way you use your tal­ents or serve your clients in those new needs?  What can you can do vir­tu­al­ly that you aren’t doing already? So many have piv­ot­ed almost overnight to do things online even if they per­vi­ous hadn’t worked that way. You can too. Seek trust­ed sources to han­dle online sales of your prod­uct or ser­vice with proven E‑commerce soft­ware like Shopi­fy, Ven­mo and Pay­Pal ser­vices. There are many who can set your web­site up with it if you don’t feel you can. Once you do, my course on how to pro­mote your work with con­fi­dence on LinkedIn Learn­ing gives you what you’ll need to suc­cess­ful­ly con­nect and com­mu­ni­cate on a deep­er lev­el with your audi­ence. In fact, why not check out this seg­ment which tells you what I can teach you right now?!

Who are the heroes that inspire me?

Find peo­ple in your field (or in gen­er­al) that you admire. Look for those who do things the way you aspire to or who have what you want. Tru­ly lis­ten, explore what they are doing, and get inspired!  There’s a wealth of videos, books, pod­casts and Ted Talks out there; one Google ses­sion will reveal them. We love Simon Sinek’s Start with Why. It brings home the idea that peo­ple don’t buy what you do but why you do it!  Besides COVID, there are so many issues that peo­ple care about on the front burn­er that it is a fer­tile time to be very clear about your why to con­nect with them.

Nicte Creative Design Can Help

We’ve been focused on Empa­thy Mar­ket­ing for years, and are thrilled to see this com­ing to the fore­front. We want to help you on your own brand adapt­abil­i­ty path into the future. 

• Sign up for our newslet­ter for VIP access to our blog posts with time­ly infor­ma­tion, tuto­ri­als, and specials. 
• Down­load our annu­al Pan­tone Col­or of the Year Guide FREE 
• Take my Col­or Trends class on LinkedIn Learn­ing for FREE right now
• Sam­ple sev­er­al FREE seg­ments of each oth­er class­es on LinkedIn Learning
• Check out my Free Adobe Express Tuto­ri­als (for­mer­ly Adobe Spark) on YouTube 

If you are look­ing to go deep­er into a brand­ing or rebrand­ing, design, or strate­gic mar­ket­ing advice, please CONTACT US! We’ll get through this — together. 

It’s dur­ing a time of chal­lenge and even cri­sis that we see how brands can grow their iden­ti­ty and align it with human-cen­tered values.

While the world has a long way to go, we hope that the lessons we are learn­ing due to COVID-19 make us see the val­ue in empa­thy and human­i­ty, bridg­ing the gap from sales stats to impact­ing the lives of those who need it most.