As we emerge from the pandemic, people are embracing their values more than ever. Brand marketing teams and consumers alike are expecting brands to support their values, demonstrating diversity and inclusivity in their actions, as well as offering digital services that allow people to return to the world at their own pace.
At the Brand Innovators Cannes…Virtually livecast event, high-level executives shared learnings and experiences from the last year and where they see the culture moving forward.
Alia Kemet, Vice President, Creative & Digital Marketing, McCormick & Company said that she tries to lead by example with her team and she fosters an environment where people can be comfortable having uncomfortable conversations.
“What’s new in the world is talking about social change and tuning in,” said Kemet. “This is not a new conversation for me. The women of my family had a chat and my aunt was saying how strange it was to her that everyone is celebrating Juneteenth. It felt strange to her that the world is now recognizing and celebrating. That resonated with me and my response to her was that it actually feels odd. It shouldn’t but it feels odd that everyone is talking about diversity and inclusion and social injustice. It’s all of it at the same time which is invigorating and exciting. As someone who’s been having these conversations for 25 years, you want to believe that this is not a fad, and that this is really a shift and change. It feels tiresome to show up everyday, but that’s what we have to do.”
Representation and inclusivity in advertising has been evolving over the past few decades and we can learn a lot from those who have helped paved the way.
“I was reading an article recently by Ursula Burns who is the former CEO of Xerox and she said that she did an interview 15 years ago and someone asked her whether or not she felt that being a black woman affected her career. She had a really honest answer which was that she couldn’t really tell at that time in her career how being both a woman as well as a black woman affected her career trajectory because she’d always been black and female and she had nothing to compare it to,” said Linh Peters, Global Chief Marketing Officer at Calvin Klein. “And when you don’t have anybody in the room to compare yourself to, you don’t know if you’re doing well, and if you’re not, where you can improve. Personally, when I started my career 25 years ago, it was all about assimilation. It was all about how you assimilate into your company, into your work culture, and with colleagues. When you think about it, when I was thinking about my career back then and blending in, it’s naturally challenging to blend in when there aren’t really many other people that look like you.”
1-800-Flowers.com’s mission is to help people to connect and celebrate, which has been complicated over the past year. Their response has been to make meaningful connections and create value.
“This past year we started hosting live events on subjects that matter to our customers. So we used data that we collected on site, pages that they spend a lot of time on, content they are clicking on, reading within our blog, even social posts that we see have the highest engagement rate,” said Tania Nemaric, Vice President, Brand Marketing, 1-800-Flowers.com. “We learned that customers are confused and they’re looking for information. What do I send, what’s appropriate to send, what do I say? So we leveraged our relationship we have in the sympathy space, Rebecca Soffer, cofounder of the site Modern Loss to host a series of episodes on Instagram and Facebook Live. There were 5 so far, we reached over half a million people, really strong engagement and participation. For us it’s going back to the customers, using the data from their onsite experience, what they’re searching for in the search bar, becoming that resource and helpful part of their celebration.”
The health industry saw digital acceleration last year as telehealth became a more viable option to people looking for medical care but wanting to avoid doctor’s offices and hospitals during a pandemic.
“We saw an increase in utilization of new ways in terms of telemedicine for example,” said Mehdi Tabrizi, Chief Marketing Officer at Moda Health. “That became a new way that people engaged with their providers. Prior to COVID, it was starting to increase a little bit but it was still significantly less. In some cases, it went from single digits to the mid 30s in terms of adoption. It was good for the consumer because they were able to access their providers in more ways than before. Access can often be difficult and now they were able to make appointments on the same day. So these were all great benefits for the consumers but in many ways, providers also benefit from them because now they can interact with patients from their home at their convenient time. So it allowed for a work life balance for physicians as well.”
Dining shifted dramatically last year, as fast casual restaurants were hit hard and QSRs saw increased revenues as drive through offered contactless convenience. Dining out has returned and as it does, so too do new opportunities for rethinking the dining experience. Torchy’s Tacos, which serves fresh made-to-order tacos with a unique mix of flavor combinations, is a testament to what dining out looks like. They are not QSR and not fast casual either.
“We have created this positioning we call craft casual, which has three pillars,” said Scott Hudler, Chief Marketing Officer, Torchy’s Tacos. “The first is, we have the convenience and quality of the fast casual. If you want to get in and get out in a hurry, we can do that. If you have got 15 minutes for lunch, we can do that. We also have the authenticity and creativity that you would find in a food truck or a food trailer…We really focus on having those unique menu items. The third piece is just the energy and excitement of a bar and the craft nature like one you would find in a bar. So everything with Torchy’s is made to order, made from scratch. When you order a Mr. Orange Taco, which is blackened salmon, that salmon is blackened right then, it is not sitting there waiting in a line for you to slop it on a plate. We shuck our own corn, if you order a margarita we squeeze our own lime.”
