There are going to be winners and losers as a result of what we have witnessed in 2020 for businesses and the industry which is very much in the middle of business and the consumer is the marketing agency. There has been many challenges for the likes of TWO NIL CEO Mark Zamuner to navigate as the world went into lockdown, and there was very much a need for swift change in focuses. This was a wonderful opportunity for agencies who had the right clients in the retail sector who were willing to spend, and here is how they had to make sudden changes.
Tone of the Ads
Managing the sensibilities of the world during this time has been very challenging for ad agencies who wished to bring attention to their client, doing so in a way that hit the right tone. There could be no glib tagline about a topic where people were dying, and they certainly had to tread a fine line between bringing attention to the situation and being careful not to offend.
Pitches
Given the enormous shot in focus to the retail sector ad agencies were very keen on adding retail clients to their customer base, and that meant that they had to meet with some different challenges with regards to the way in which they pitched. The virtual pitch is a very different animal to a face to face meeting and this is something which certainly threw down the gauntlet for agencies, and forced them to become highly creative in order to win over a potential client, doing it all through the camera of a laptop.
Losing Clients
It would be easy to assume that digital marketing agencies were doing well financially because of the last few months but the reality is that they also had a great amount of financial uncertainty as their clients faced financial difficulties owing to the situation. Furthermore there would have been many campaigns which had been cancelled, campaigns which teams had invested a lot of time and money into. There are some small ad agencies who have struggled to stay afloat during the last few months and they have had to find ways to streamline or seek government support in order to keep going.
Retail
And finally, as we have already mentioned in this piece, the retail sector is the one that was booming and as the money began to flow in that direction, agencies who perhaps weren’t already operating in this sector had to quickly change their focus and position themselves front and center of a new area in order to take advantage of this opportunity, and not miss out.
Those businesses who have done well from all of this are those who recognized the need to change quickly, and the same can be said for the agile marketing agencies who were able to make the necessary changes to stay on top and to make the most of a terrible situation.
