As the COVID-19 pandemic stretches into another year, brands are being forced to rethink their short-term strategies to ride out the pandemic and balance plans for long-term growth with the realities of marketing in a fast-moving situation.
According to Mike White, CEO and founder of creative agency Lively, the phrase ‘adapt and pivot’ is taking on new meaning as a critical building block of long-term strategic planning.
Five principles to balance long-term and short-term objectives
- Stay calm, but don’t carry on as normal: Faced by the profound changes brought about by COVID-19, existing plans may feel inappropriate for the times.
- Factor uncertainty into brand planning: Every organisation must bake uncertainty into its planning and keep that approach moving forward, not just during peak pandemic times.
- Adapt the best short-term tactics for the long term: Broaden focus onto customers and other external audiences to understand how their wants and needs have changed and to identify how to evolve propositions accordingly.
- Learn to pivot, then make it your strategy: Dial up the parts of the business that allow you to keep doing this despite the changes and challenges brought about by the pandemic.
- Use the pivot strategy as an engine to grow: To turn all insights and learnings from the pandemic into an engine for future and on-going growth.
Sourced from WARC
