The crisis unearthed all our prejudices, hidden in the depths of our ability to comprehend and understand the digital world. These prejudices are now slowly drifting along, like trash in the ocean, waiting for us to collect them.

Action!

In this locked-down world, practically the entire population has their eyes glued to screens – even more than before. Do we really have nothing meaningful to say to them?

In such times, agencies should be completely swamped, building first response strategies for companies and stakeholders. It’s dangerous for companies to think the isolation will pass in a month or two and everything will go back to normal, as it was before.
 
The forced isolation is also a great opportunity for businesses to rethink their strategy and adjust it to the new reality. It’s time to open our eyes and our minds and detect changes in the customers’ habits brought on by this new 'post-corona' era.

Now is the time to dig deeper. Encouraged by the current situation, people are starting to re-evaluate their core beliefs. We’re figuring out what matters and what doesn’t. And the space for relevant brands is opening and growing. For brands that prove every single one of their products makes the consumers’ lives better, more joyful, more interesting, easier, more optimistic, and inspiring …
 
In the not-so-distant past, the average consumer saw advertising as unnecessary harassment, as nothing but a hoax, as a polluter of their personal spiritual space. After only a few weeks of quarantine, we are sick of being consumers. It is no longer entertaining or fulfilling. We have quickly figured out that the era of uncritical consumerism is over, it is empty. Fake profiles will be revealed, empty advertising ideas with no proper content will be exposed. What counts now are actions, not empty words.

Time for heroes

What we need today is even more passion, courage, and ideas. It’s time for companies to single out their true heroes: the products that could become the champions of the upcoming era. They need to support ideas that are based on making the consumers’ lives easier and richer in times of recession – and afterwards as well. Each brand that wants to be recognised as the chosen one needs to extract and demonstrate its true social purpose, not just its commercial value. 

The web is starting to become the promoter and the epicentre of all activity. Digital currencies will become the ultimate legal tender. Physical stores are becoming micro distribution centres and the uberization of everything is starting to look like the new standard. The basic income guarantee is becoming a reality and the family is apparently being regarded as a single account. The government will soon start to encourage the digitalisation of our identities and demand access to all of our data. Production will be robotized with greater speed, 5G technology will receive a quantum boost. The new reality, which is forming in front of our eyes, will bring great opportunities. Businesses that fails to keep up with the 21st century will vanish.

And when advertising takes over our screens again, ready to lure us back to life, we will still be here – ready to firmly guide companies to the new era.

Because the time for heroes is now.