The word on everyone’s lips right now is restart. But what does restart mean and how do we do it? Julian Dailly finds out
Lockdown was binary: total, immediate, absolute. Restart, conversely, will be gradual, fragmented and potentially reversible.
My observation, talking with clients, reading data, news, social media posts and experiencing my own community, is that restart means a return to competition.
Shops are re-opening and so are market-share-stealing special offers. The social contract of the lockdown is dissolving. Parks are refilling. Tutting has returned. We’re getting used to doing business over the internet. Questions swirl about who will pay for all this. Political disagreement has reignited. Sport will soon return to the TV. Marketing is back.
As it happens, we’re not entirely comfortable with a return to competition. It concludes the only uplifting part of lockdown; where we’re all in this together. Self-interest must return because we can’t survive without it.
From mass compliance, restart re-awakens our hibernating individualism, making restart disorganised and unpredictable. That’s why everyone’s talking about it.
Removing choices created certainty. Returning choice creates uncertainty.
Governments closed the economy to keep us safe. Across most sectors, businesses and consumers had no choice but to stop transacting. There was one benefit: We avoided difficult choices such as to open or not or to try and shop or not. It was simple: Stay at home. Save lives.
At different rates across the world governments are carefully unlocking their economies. As they do, they turn on choice. And choice means one thing: Competition for selection.
Covid-19 reshaped our outlook on what we want and need. This impact how and what we choose during restart which then changes the nature of the competition to be selected. What do we know so far?
New behaviours, new skills
During lockdown our data shows in lockdown consumers have been life-hacking: improvising solutions to tasks we previously paid to solve. We’ve been teaching ourselves new beauty techniques and DIY skills, exercising in the living room or home-schooling our children.
As Confucius might have said, teach a fella to rewire his garage and he’ll never need to pay a sparky again.
As we restart businesses and brands will face new needs and buyer dynamics. They will have to listen and adapt or risk being losing out in the emerging competition.
Talk to the new me, not the old me
When consumers return, they will follow the brands that speak to them. This means some brands will do better than others based on how they communicate and engage with consumers.
Some will make huge blunders. At the start lockdown our UK data showed self-serving Sports Direct and Wetherspoons were considered the villains. Tesco and Costa were the heroes, championing employees and the NHS respectively.
Across world, there will be new heroes and villains in the restart. What will distinguish them?
Consumers want acknowledgment and attainable imagery. Like a happy family enjoying time together. In lockdown, this is the best anyone can ask for. But what if a brand’s advert, paused in February, featured Ronaldo on a beach? Then that advert can’t go out.
Our data also shows during restart consumers are prepared to accept social distancing and precautionary measures that add inconvenience. But they also claim they will switch brands if they see long or crowded queues or feel service and range have significantly deteriorated.
Brands will face unique communication and operational choices stimulating and serving demand.
From unity to division
When we face a common threat, we unify. As Covid-19 recedes our unity fades; individualism replaces collectivism. We already see opinion on hot topics dividing groups. One example is footing the bill for the pandemic.
How to pay for Covid 19 is already becoming a powerful political resource as adversarial politics returns.
The cost of living
The one constant during lockdown for both people and businesses are the fixed cost of existence: mortgages, rents, food, insurance, overheads. This fuel the urgency to restart for everyone.
- The taxpayer cannot fund the augmented reality of instant grants, mass furloughing, payment holidays and targeted generosity indefinitely
- People made redundant desperately need to go for interviews as a first step in re-finding employment
Disorderly competition, our old friend
If we were equally locked-down, ending lockdown reveals just how different the restart positions of brands, businesses and people actually are. Some are well placed and well prepared. Some neither. Either way restart means a return to competition as means of survival.
But like a city whose traffic lights are turned on district by district, it will be a disorderly restart creating volatile, unpredictable competition where risks and opportunities are greatest.
Yes, the word on everyone’s lips is restart. And if you haven’t already, how will you get back in the game?
Julian Dailly is Senior Vice President, Key Clients at Savanta, the global intelligence business, which offers research, insight and marketing strategy to help brands make better decisions. He formerly worked at Interbrand and The Royal Society for Blind Children.
