Situational Marketing: Navigating Through The Covid Crisis

In early April, the Modi Government launched the Aarogya Setu app to aid in contract tracing, similar to what has been seen in South Korea, Israel, China. However, we are not going to deep dive and analyse its technicalities and legality in this section.

What we want to point out here is, soon after the launch, ShareChat announced that it will be setting aside Rs. 50 million to promote Aarogya Setu. This Twitter-backed platform is looking to publicise and push Aarogya Setu among its little over 60 million active users in 15 different languages. Such proactiveness is unlikely to go unnoticed and would actually help ShareChat gain goodwill and trust among its key stakeholders: its users and also the government.

Let's take a peek into how marketing, as in the above case, is evolving in this unprecedented scenario and how firms are trying to come up with innovative marketing campaigns.

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These days there's a lot of uncertainty and fear everywhere. While countries are slowly trying to come out of self-imposed lockdowns, the danger of the virus affecting people and causing fatalities is still quite imminent. In such testing times, while a few people are working from home, there is a sizable proportion who are in constant fear of getting relieved from their duties.

On one hand, there is incertitude, on the other, there is ennui.

Brands, therefore, have to be very careful and sensitive about the whole situation. The roles that their marketing campaigns and the advertisements would play ought to be multi-pronged : they should create awareness and inform people rather than alarm them, empathise with the ones affected directly and indirectly, as well as try and entertain the people, so as to make a mark. The ads have to be genuine and positive and should be careful to be not too preachy.

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Tweaking Logos in Solidarity

A case in point is McDonald's. The global food chain split the two arches in its logo to encourage people to take part in social distancing -- that is really important to prevent community spread and consequently, the number of affected people.

Pizza Hut, rechristened as "Pizza Home" temporarily, has also removed the hut from its logo, encouraging people to stay home.

In a similarly catchy but earnest way, Pizza Hut has also changed its brand logo from a hut to a home and has come up with #QualityTimeNotQuarantine campaign, advocating stay-at-home to resist the spread of the virus and also remind people staying with their families to utilise this opportunity to strengthen the bonds, that in many cases, have been seen to have waned, especially with the fast pace of the 21st century life.

Coca-Cola, Audi, PepsiCo, Tech Mahindra and Volkswagen have also tweaked their logos or their taglines to spread this important and pertinent message of social distancing.

Awareness and Appeals Campaigns

Tata Tea's campaign Iss baar #BadonKeLiye - JaagoRe has also been one such message, targeted mostly at the millennials, urging them to not go out and stay cautious so that they don't spread the disease to their seniors, who have been found to be at greater risk of developing complications and of dying, if they contract this deadly disease.

The Tata brand, always seens as an Indian and 'moralistic' brand, has chosen to encourage millennials to care for the elderly, bringing in warms cups of tea.

Reckkit Benckisser's #DisinfectToProtect campaign and Lowe Lintas partnering with Mumbai Police on the “Corona Se Mat Daro Na” campaign have also found widespread visibility.

Amul has decided to hit the nostalgia nerve of its customers and loyal followers of its rather satirical and punny ad campaigns always based on events of the times.

True to its character, Amul has also come up with ads to create awareness and propagate information about the disease. However, what really has helped the brand, known for its catchy and 'punny' ads, is something else. This is where we focus on the entertainment bit. State run DD has been showing reruns of the mythological blockbusters, Ramayan and Mahabharat, that used to be famous in the 80's and 90's. This has gripped the nation and has been setting records after records for the past couple of weeks. Seeing the surge in popularity, Amul released the ads that used to accompany Mahabharat and Ramayan on DD, as a series titled Amul Classics. The placement and timing of these ads, released on the social media pages of Amul, have been perfect and people just cannot stop discussing and revelling in the nostalgia.

Oyo encouraging social distancing by promoting the Namaste!

'Everyday Heroes', 'Ditch the handshake, do the Namaste' and 'Heroes of OYO' are three digital micro-films that have been released by OYO, paying tribute to the doctors, nurses and other medical staff and others who have been at the forefront of this battle against Covid-19 and urging people to replace the handshake, as a form of greeting, with Namaste, thereby, symbolising the need to practice social distancing. Flipkart has also released a similar film with Varun Dhawan, focussing on the above-mentioned core issues prevalent in this period.

EdTech Keeping Students Inspired

As we had talked about in one of our previous articles, with schools, colleges and coaching centres shutting down, e-learning and EdTech is seeing extraordinary growth. Yet, these firms do not just want to leave it at that, and have been trying to build on this momentum by creating innovative campaigns. While Unacademy has roped in Kiran Bedi and Shashi Tharoor, UpGrad has teamed up with Big Bang Music to create an anthem #AageKiSoch, trying to encourage the youth to use this time judiciously and productively, so as to ready themselves for the new normal that's awaiting us. GradeUp has also announced the launch of #PadhaiNahiRukegi campaign, and has provided free access to a number of live and video classes.

Caring By Sharing...Costs

While campaigns and ads are one way of promoting a brand, marketing essentially boils down to satisfying your customers. This also includes volunteering for noble initiatives, such as Parle-G distributing its products, free of cost, to those in dire need through government agencies. Nike converting its factories to manufacture PPEs, P&G and Unilever pledging their support by providing hygiene goods across different markets, Facebook and Google supporting small businesses by providing free ad slots and back home Bank of Baroda's levying zero charges on digital transactions as part of its 'Stay Home, Stay Safe' campaign are small moves that have caught the people's attention and are sure to reap fruitful results, if not now, but surely later once the turmoil subsides.

To this effect, even newspapers have an important role to play, especially with the barrage of fake news that is now being generated in the digital and social media. They would have to be extra cautious in this period, and only publish information that has been verified by credible sources, and try not to sensationalise things by providing a rational point of view for every scenario. Needlessly panicking would be the last thing everyone would want to do now and the newspapers who would be successful in alleviating these concerns might just win the long game.

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That which does not kill me makes me stronger

In most of the MBA classes on Crisis Management, professors talk about converting the threats to opportunities, i.e, to take decisions in such a way that the companies come out of the crises, stronger and more matured.

It's given that in times such as these, firms would want to conserve cash by reducing CapEx expenditure and other expenses and collecting receivables. When it comes to expenses, cutting down on marketing and then Human Capital Expenses would be the first few steps a company would take. However, while this might look like a reasonable short term move, in the long term, it might not play out that well for the concerned firm. In crises like this, the customers and other stakeholders look for reassurances from the company, and if it is unable to provide that, it might lose considerable market share once the crisis gets over.

Thus Marketing as a function should be allowed to function, which would go a long way in helping the company gain trust and goodwill in the society at large. A few companies, with less competition in the market, are even being quite aggressive in their marketing activities. They are not focussing on short term ROI; instead, they are placing much more importance in promoting their brands and on winning over and retaining customers for the long haul.

It becomes really important to make the customers take note of the ethos and the values of the company more than the product offerings, during times like these.

With this in mind, companies have leveraged innovative strategies.

Cross-platform marketing, in which a company advertises through several channels, to extend its reach, has been seen with Udemy advertising through Shuttl App. While it's helping Udemy to find greater reach, Shuttl App is also being able to generate at least some revenues in a period where all the offices are closed and vehicle movement is restricted.

Another example is IPAC - the political consultancy firm - advertising its Sabki Rasoi initiative through Swiggy and Zomato, after having tied up with these two food aggregators and a slew of other professionals, kitchen partners and delivery partners, to provide freshly cooked meals, prepared in virtual kitchens, to those in urgent need of food, across >20 cities all over India.

Needless to say, the Coronavirus situation has impacted all forms of marketing. This can be seen from the fact that the cost per impression for Facebook has reduced substantially, even though the traffic on the platform has increased. However, a groundbreaking shift of the marketing spends from outdoor to digital and mobile based channels is quite a plausible prediction in the post-Covid period.

In the medium and long terms, however, we would definitely see a more advanced form of digital-mobile marketing and advertising, an example of which could be a marketing strategy integrated with IoT based applications to make it easier to reach out directly to the masses especially during pandemics like this.