How To Position Your Brand During A Pandemic

How to Perfect Your Brand Positioning During a Pandemic

Brand messaging is about more than just sharing your products, deals, or services. It’s actually one of the most effective ways to build a customer base. This is why it is so important for brands to design their messaging based around their audience and their experiences. 

The pandemic has completely transformed the way we live our lives and do business. Many of us had our homes, our families, our jobs, and our dreams completely uprooted in a matter of weeks. How you position your brand during this time is immensely important for your reputation. Your brand can’t just continue business as usual. With the world going through so much change, it’s only fitting that you position your brand for our current reality. 

Getting your brand messaging in tune with the market’s needs during the pandemic makes a world of difference. A good brand strategy evolves with the times, and updating your communications to meet the moment can be very beneficial. Below we review the key measures you can take in that regard. Changing the way you execute announcements, looking ahead to the future, and contributing thought leadership are pivotal steps to properly position your brand during and after the pandemic.

Adapt your announcements and brand messaging

Let’s face it — No one wants to hear your brand’s announcement that was planned out months ago and doesn’t take into account the current changes across the world. Instead, you should adapt your brand messaging to the tone of the people you’re trying to reach. Look at the news you have coming up in the pipeline and see how you can adapt your announcements to be more in tune with the issues and needs created by current events, whether it’s the coronavirus outbreak, political shifts, or the change of hybrid work.

The type of announcements you deliver need to be sympathetic, compassionate, and sensitive to how people may be feeling. It also would be beneficial if you can show how your brand is helping with the world of today, and tomorrow. Fortunately, you’re not the only one having to adjust your brand positioning. When the pandemic hit, several large-scale brands had plenty of success in adapting their brand messaging to these times. Take fashion retailer H&M Group, for example. It quickly arranged for its supply chain to produce personal protective equipment for hospitals and health care workers. The leadership saw where they could use their existing infrastructure to contribute to relief efforts and took swift action, making their customers understand that they care more about the world than just their bottom line. 

Another perfect example is Nike’s “Play inside, play for the world” campaign. The advertisement opens up with “To those playing in their living room. To those playing in their kitchen,” and goes on to say, “We may not be playing together, but we’re playing for 7.8 billion people.” This is an excellent example of brand positioning during the pandemic. It shows that people can sacrifice their love of outdoor fitness and sports for the greater good of speeding up our recovery from the coronavirus. If a brand whose entire culture is centered on sports and recreation can adjust its brand strategy to the pandemic, then so can yours.

Coca Cola also provided a prime example of effective brand messaging during the pandemic with its “staying apart is the best way to stay united” billboard campaign. This simple but timely brand strategy shows how some heartwarming messaging can go a long way in positioning your brand as aware of the challenges people are facing. Other, more tangible ways to adjust brand messaging to our new normal include discounts and special offers on relevant products or services since most people aren’t doing well financially. Think about what your brand can offer the public, whether it’s heartfelt words of encouragement or even just a sale to help them get back on their feet.

Looking ahead to the future

As vaccines get distributed throughout the world and brands settle into their adjustments made over the past year, it’s good to begin looking ahead towards the future of your brand positioning. You’ve learned to cater your brand messaging to everyone that’s been locked down for months, but what about for when we can get back to living our lives? Many of us are feeling hope and optimism for the future for the first time in too long. Encouraging this newfound hope in your brand messaging and reassuring people that our recovery is in full swing can go a long way in bringing joy to your consumers.

Google released an excellent campaign specifically on this. The commercial starts out pretty straightforward. A beautiful piano score plays in the background while the classic white Google search engine appears on the screen. Keyboard strokes begin as a non-visible user types out words that have come to define the pandemic and life for most of us over this past year. These include words like quarantine, social distancing, school closings, and lockdown.

What immediately follows hits your emotions substantially. The music speeds up and you begin to hear school bells, crowds laughing, and an assortment of sounds we’ve grown nostalgic for. Words are then highlighted and quickly deleted from the search bar and Google Calendar. Playdates and happy hours lose their virtual status, sports are no longer canceled, and weddings are no longer delayed. Theaters and restaurants listed on Google Maps switch from being closed to open.

After all of this build up the advertisement ends with a simple message of “Get back to what you love,” before showing the user search “covid vaccine near me.” It is no surprise that this heartwarming commercial and call to get vaccinated struck a chord with many of its viewers. They were quick to jump on social media to share how it even brought them to tears, praising the search engine for bringing hope back into their lives. There’s never been a more appropriate time to deliver brand messaging like this. Use this time to find how your brand can deliver hope to those that need it.

Focus on thought leadership

In lieu of conventional marketing and untimely product launches, one of the most effective ways you can stay in the public eye during the pandemic is to expand your thought leadership strategy. Thought leadership is a powerful way to captivate an audience that likes to be educated instead of solicited. Brands frequently make the mistake of trying to sell through a mindset of what’s best for them, instead of what’s best for their customers. An effective thought leadership strategy can give your audience insight into your brand and a shared understanding of the impactful solutions it offers to the world.

Thought leadership gets your brand messaging out there, even when you may not actually have any news at that moment. More importantly, during a pandemic people are more likely to read your thought leadership. For the first time, many of us are using the internet as it was intended — as a tool to facilitate the global spread of information. People stuck at home are craving content and information, making them much more likely to view your thought leadership pieces.

Use this time to write thought leadership content on your blog. Better yet — secure yourself as a guest contributor on a news website or a major industry publication, so you can share your thought leadership with a wider audience. The world is searching for leaders more than ever, making it a good time to step up and offer insightful and inspiring content.

Overall, you should get used to the idea that your brand strategy is a living, breathing thing that evolves with the world around it. Your public relations strategy from 2019 isn’t going to be effective in 2020, never mind 2021. Numerous companies have already effectively demonstrated how to adjust their brand positioning to the needs of the public. Now is the time to rise as a leader and offer thought leadership to help businesses and communities adjust to our new normal. The world may feel vastly different than it did just over a year ago, but you can continue to deliver effective public relations if you position your brand to meet our current reality.