There are moments when world events overtake brands. Moments when the macro forces in a scenarios workshop or the market risks that are bullet-pointed in a strategic plan become all too real. Moments that bring brands to a halt. Three such moments are imprinted on all of us:
9/11. 2008. 2020.
That’s not to overlook other disruptive moments. Such as Black Monday in 1987 or the Gulf War in 1991 or the dot-com implosion in 2000 or the SARS outbreak in 2002 or the start of the Iraq War in 2003 or the London Underground bombings in 2005 or the Mumbai attacks in 2008 or the eruption of the Iceland volcano in 2010 or the tsunami in Japan in 2011 or the Arab Spring uprisings from 2010 to 2012 or the George Floyd protests in 2020 or the inflationary spike and supply chain breakdowns in 2021 or the Ukraine War that began in 2014 and escalated in 2022. Or the attacks in Israel just over ten days ago.
I’m sure I’ve overlooked some disruptions, but this handful is enough to remind us that such moments are more frequent than we tend to remember. Not every one of them affects us to the same degree. Many affect just some of us. It’s a continuum, not a single sort of thing. The three I called out have the been the worst, at least in my career. All have been challenging, though. All have been moments that engulfed brands in upheaval and worry. Many have been moments of norms, values and ethics in addition to business models and operating efficiencies.
Such moments remind us that on the world stage, consumer marketing—what I do, as well as lots of you—is merely a player with ‘many exits and entrances,’ to take some liberties with Shakespeare. These are moments when brands are responding to the course of events more than shaping the course of events. Which feels weird to marketers who are steeped in the art and science of influencing the marketplace. As a result, we often end up ad libbing our way through these moments instead of disciplining our response with lessons learned from past experiences. Especially the three events that affected us the most.
An early September day. I was late to work the morning of September 11, 2001, having flown home late the night before from a marketing science conference on the West Coast. As I was walking through the parking deck into the Atlanta office building where I worked, I got a call from our CEO in North Carolina who asked if I had heard about a plane hitting one of the World Trade Center towers. He was concerned about our New York staff who lived nearby, and he was worried about disruptions to our operations, even though our office was in midtown. As we were talking, I heard our CFO come into his office to tell him another plane had hit the towers. Our CEO at the time grew up in New York and I could hear his voice tighten as he ended our call by asking me to find out which employees were traveling that day and where they were.
The day became surreal, as many of you remember. News websites crashed. Rumors flew. People huddled in hallways. Confusion turned into fear. Police were suddenly everywhere. Our office building was soon evacuated. I watched the towers fall on an AOL feed. My wife was out of town, and safe, so my night turned into a long sleepless vigil in front of a TV tuned to Peter Jennings, who was offering what reassurance and comfort he could while his network broadcast an unchanging camera shot of the smoking rubble brightly lit under huge spotlights erected to help rescue teams search for survivors. As we learned, there were none.
I know this sounds stark. It was. For all of us. And it took a toll on us in our jobs as well. It was hard to refocus and, frankly, in that moment, it seemed disrespectful and insensitive for any of us to care at all about consumer brands, much less to think that our brands could have anything to say about this calamity. It was hard to figure out next steps.
For a few weeks we lost that sense we have in our heads about how brands fit into the world. As I now put it, we lost the narrative of the marketplace and the role of our brands in that narrative.
The narrative of the marketplace. We manage our brands on the basis of a narrative understanding about how things work—the players, the personalities, the plotline. Things like what consumers need and want most, what brands have permission to say, what makes money and what doesn’t. It’s the story we tell ourselves about how things work. Everything we do is organized around this story.
When events overtake brands, the story we normally carry in our heads—that narrative of the marketplace—is no longer applicable. Not forever, usually, but definitely not in the moment. In such moments, it’s easy to do the wrong thing because it’s hard to know the right thing to do.
Indeed, it is hard to feel comfortable doing anything at all. Inaction seems safest, so brands come to a halt. When, instead, brands should be leading the way. “ These are moments when brands are responding to the course of events more than shaping the course of events. Which feels weird to marketers who are steeped in the art and science of influencing the marketplace.
Empathy. Context. Helping. A little over two weeks after 9/11, we convened an hour-long teleconference with clients and other interested participants that I entitled, “Trying to Get Back to Business as Usual in Trying Times.” There were three critical takeaways. One, remember the basics. Marketing is about solving problems for people. Brands can and should focus on being problem-solvers, both in normal times and in trying times. The key is to lean into empathy, not zeal or fervid passions or politics.
The second takeaway in our post-9/11 briefing was to put things in context. Challenges and difficulties that existed before any disruption are sure to be exacerbated and worsened, at least temporarily. But the disruption didn’t cause these problems, so don’t get off-track with these issues. These are the regular challenges of the marketplace, not new challenges.
The other side of the coin from difficulties being worsened are opportunities that existed before the disruption being enhanced. People always take stock during disruptions, so changes that were moving slowly pick up speed. People become more likely to move ahead with new priorities and new ambitions. This offers a way to inject a renewed focus into brands at just the moment when brands have lost focus because they have lost the narrative of the marketplace.
The final takeaway we offered was for brands to shift from thinking in terms of the help they need for fixing themselves to thinking in terms of the help consumers need in order to come back into the marketplace. This is the way to provide leadership as well as help oneself.
Brands can’t fix the disruption, but brands can help remedy some of the human consequences of the disruption.
So, those three things—empathy, context, helping—were the heart of our message about brands navigating disruption. I often say that we became marketing therapists for many of our clients, listening, being there, and reassuring them that the marketplace would recover and that their brands would live to see another day.
This is the same message we delivered after the economy collapsed in 2008. As part of that, for roughly two years, I published a weekly newsletter on economic conditions and brand opportunities called “Looking Up.” We delivered the same message as the pandemic shut down the economy, first with a “Checklist for Brands” about how to respond immediately, next with a late March 2020 FutureView entitled, “Pandemic, Politics & Business,” and then with an ongoing look at what would stick and what would not entitled, “New and Not New.” Over the years, I have felt like our perspective is particularly helpful during disruptive moments—moments when the narrative of the marketplace is lost and staying the course is the challenge facing brands.
Volatility and uncertainty undaunted. As we have seen over the past week-and-a-half, volatility continues to roil the marketplace. As you know, this has been a theme of mine for several years. I’ve referenced it in prior issues of this newsletter, and I continue to talk about this as an important factor in the marketplace. With one war ongoing, the one now starting piles on more volatility and uncertainty. Which worsens the normal divides of opinions and politics. Brands find themselves in unfamiliar territory yet again, pressed to decide how to proceed—what to say and whether to say anything at all, and how to engage with consumers who are divided anew along different lines than before. The contours of this moment are unique, but the challenges are similar. It’s about the narrative of the marketplace.
Leadership in this moment. Perhaps the thing needed most right now is empathy. I am not making any suggestions about moral equations or historical context. I am simply saying that people who have been hurt want acknowledgement of their injury, not explanations for it. Certainly not judgment. There is no need to engage in politics to be empathetic. Empathy is about the here and now. About saying something. Silence has not served many universities well because there is no empathy in that. Which is the imperative of this moment, and one that will become even more essential if war widens.
It should be noted that all of this has sprung up just as the economy is making a transition and elections are on the horizon. In other words, people are already on edge about finances and the future. What’s happening in the Middle East is not the cause of this brittleness, but it will certainly exacerbate it. So, brands must respond to it as the regular challenge that was already ahead, not as a special problem that requires special actions or interventions.
In particular, brands should focus on helping people find their way into the marketplace in the midst of a terrible turn of events. Which is best done by offering people better solutions. As noted in the recently released 2024 MONITOR Outlook, people are looking ”selfward”—for nurture, for attention, for compassion, for joy. For things that are less about caring for the world and more about caring for themselves. And the best way to deliver that is through empathy.
Brands are always best served by standing with core human values. There is a version of this that we refer to in various ways that is about serving core human needs. Core values go hand-in-hand. These are the values that matter whatever the politics or the divides of the moment might be. These are the values most relevant to people during disruptions. These are the values that brands should always stand for, but especially in the moments that overtake everything else.
Contributed to Branding Strategy Insider By: Walker Smith, Chief Knowledge Officer, Brand & Marketing at Kantar
The Blake Project Can Help You Craft A Brand Advantage In The Strategic Brand Storytelling Workshop
Branding Strategy Insider is a service of The Blake Project: A strategic brand consultancy specializing in Brand Research, Brand Strategy, Brand Growth and Brand Education
