 Hello everyone and welcome to a very special webinar how coronavirus accelerated digital adoption and what brands need to do to stay ahead. This webinar is being held in support of excerpts from experts, a title published by Fortune Hill last year to support NHS charities together in the UK. We'll be sharing a bit more on that later in the presentation. Before we get started, I'd like to throw over a few items with you so that you know how to participate in today's session. The presentation itself will last approximately 30 minutes with a 30 minute Q&A. You'll be able to send text questions to today's presenters at any time during the webinar by typing your question into the control panel on your screen. We will address as many as we can during our Q&A session at the end. This session is being recorded and will be shared via our content hub cim.co.uk forward slash exchange within the next few working days. You can also view all of our previous webinars via exchange. Now I'm delighted to hand over to Caroline Hoodak and Eve Williams, who will be today's presenters. Over to you. Hi everyone, thank you for joining. We're really excited to be here today. So we're going to talk to you about how coronavirus accelerated digital adoption and examples of brands who've pivoted and adapted and stayed ahead. One of the things I think that is worth pointing out is we've said to the accelerator, but I think we're very much unfortunately in the middle of this. And so what these are really initial observations, things that we've seen, but obviously things are evolving. So this is very much a snapshot in time. So by way of introduction, I'm Caroline Hoodak. My background is I started out on the agency side as with WPP for 10 years. I then shifted into tech, joined a small startup in San Francisco, and then was the fifth person showing the product marketing team at Facebook. After that, I set up and ran the consumer marketing team for a mere Facebook for a number of years, and then most recently as the regional marketing director for EMB. Eve. I'm delighted to be here with you as well. I'm Eve Williams and currently the CMO at eBay UK having joined back in December. Prior to that, I worked at ASOS, the online fashion brand, where I was the global brand director for seven years, looking at our acquisition, engagement, and then brand development as well. Prior to that, I worked for the Omnicom agency, CEDA, looking at how we use content to engage with audiences like Tess Grimbrescio. So as Caroline said, delighted to be here today and talking to you about some of the observations from brands that we've seen over the last year and how they've innovated. So I'm going to start and just kind of set a bit of a scene, and then Eve's going to talk through some examples. So in terms of 2020, as I'm sure everyone who's listening and knows, it was not your typical year. So the world has very much kind of turned upside down, and that led to a huge shift in terms of consumer behavior, but also really accelerated the shift to digital. And brands in a lot of ways were sort of left to figure out what to do and what is very much not unprecedented time. And it's interesting to see how some really adapted and did really creative interesting things while others sort of were left behind. So I found this quote from Steve Haskell, who's the president's CEO of Reuters, who said, I think we've seen three to four years of progress in just three to four months in terms of acceptance of what the new world needs to look like. So what he was talking about there was this huge shift to digital. And what I would say is I actually think he's been very conservative. And all the CMOs and business leaders I've spoken to have said it's much more like tenures in terms of the shift. We've seen a lot of huge shift, as you'll see later in e-commerce, but also these sort of nascent industries that now very much become mainstream. So looking at consumers and kind of how affected them, I'm sure as everyone here can relate, 2020, our lives were not what they usually are. So, you know, there've been huge pressures with families, but I think what's interesting here and what you and I were talking about is, you know, there has been a balance and while there have been a lot of hardships, there have been some good things. So families have very much been under pressure, but there have been good things in terms of, you know, a number of families really enjoying spending that time together and kind of work-life balance becoming much more of a topic that I think people are readily discussing, remote working, those kind of areas which before, you know, weren't really sort of mainstream kind of had become the default. In terms of the economy, there's obviously huge anxieties. I think, you know, massive amounts of layoffs, obviously a lot of government funding needing to kind of support businesses, but there have been savings in terms of people, again, working from home. Not going out as much. So, you know, there has been that side as well. I think another thing that we've really seen, which actually is quite relevant to kind of what we're doing today and sort of supporting NHS charity, is really people coming out in a sense of community, which I think a lot of people are saying they haven't really seen since, you know, World War II. I think the example we've used is when the NHS asked for volunteers and they initially were looking for 250,000 and they got over 750,000. And I think everyone can relate in terms of clapping for Claire's and sort of other programs that are going on, that people really are sort of looking at the great good in a sense of community has sort of come to the fore, which I think has been really nice. So, I think along with consumers and sort of their lives turning upside down sort of by necessity, the plans of business were also thrown up in the air. So, you know, unfortunately, we have seen, you know, a large number of bankruptcies and largely in sort of physical retail. So, you'd see sort of Arcadia in the state, you've got sort of J Crew, JC Penney. I would say those certain physical retailers, so NEX for instance, has adapted and actually done phenomenally well. So, I think it really goes to show that the business is fundamentally healthy and also has a sort of growth mindset. And they do actually end up doing well. Obviously, small businesses under huge pressure. And other things that we've seen as well, sort of physical retail has done really poorly. There's been this exponential growth in terms of online platforms and sort of payment platforms. So, Amazon, for instance, I think I was reading that Jeff Bezos made $12 billion in a single day. You know, if you look through, there have been huge sort of disparity in terms of winners and losers of who's actually done well. So, Amazon, obviously like AWS, and their sort of main platform PayPal, we've seen huge growth in sort of partial payment platforms like Clana and Afterpay. And interestingly enough, there's been this huge shift from a sort of cashless payment system, so a cash-based payment system globally to a cashless payment system. So, a country like Germany, which surprisingly is still a very cash-based economy in 2020 was the first time that credit card payments actually overtook cash payments in Germany. And we've seen that as a huge trend across the board. And I think the other thing that we're seeing is everyone sort of already lives in somewhat of a multi-channel world, but now everyone's kind of got their Zoom and their Slack and their WhatsApp and their Signal and a million different things that they're sort of multitasking and using as a way to sort of contact consumers. So, in terms of the shift from offline to online, it has been really exponential. The other thing that we've seen is these somewhat sort of nascent industries, which were either start-ups or have been around for a bit, but really weren't mainstream, suddenly become very mainstream. So, a cardio, for instance, you think everyone shops groceries online, but that actually wasn't the case, but now it's sort of increasingly becoming the case. We're seeing sort of other things like e-learning. So, Germany is a big e-learning platform. So, things like masterclass, Skillshare, and anyone who's home schooling right now has been using all of these a lot. And online fitness is another area. So, you've got companies like Peloton, which were sort of early movers, and other brands like Fit, which is a UK startup, which actually has gained huge traction during this. And you're seeing a lot of people who previously were sort of in-person Pilates teachers suddenly completely transforming their business, delivery companies. So, Uber Eats delivery, obviously huge traction there, and then e-health as well. So, platforms like Babylon Health, again, becoming kind of the de facto way to look at sort of different health issues. So, it's really interesting in terms of a lot of these industries that probably in 2019, you'd say they're still quite niche, they haven't really become mainstream, 2020 really propelled them to the fore. So, I think looking at that sort of context setting, France really sort of had a choice in terms of how they adapted to the environment. And Eve's going to talk to you a little bit about this, but really it's sort of, you know, how do they behave? How do they adapt and pivot? You know, they thought things were just going to stay the same, and they were just going to go on as usual, that really wasn't going to work. I think kind of ways of working, being really creative, being really fast, but then also how they adapted the needs of their consumers, how they talk to their consumers in a way that sort of feels empathetic and understanding sort of that a lot of people are going through a lot of hardships right now, and they don't want to be overly consumerist. But also, you know, really how they embrace digital channels and do that not just as a fad or something that's a kind of side project, but really that becoming kind of the core of their marketing plan. So I'm going to hand over to Eve, who's going to go through examples of brands who've really set the gold standard for this. Thanks Caroline. So building on the context that Caroline shared, I thought it might be helpful to start by just providing some of the kind of themes that we identified and how those brands have really showed up during the last year. So if we go on to just talk about some of those themes that have been present, we'll give examples of these in a minute, but I just thought it was helpful to just provide these as kind of to have in your mind as you're hearing about some of these examples, just to think about the ways that these customers have demanded our brands to change and adapt to their lives over the last year. So the first one in providing support, this has been really about understanding those brands who have taken the option to proactively step up in the efforts to support the work against COVID. Those have been impacted on the front line, those losing their jobs, those whose lives have been impacted. And this is all about understanding the unique role that the brands can play and the right they have to be in that space at the point. The second one in being responsible is really understanding that brands have an opportunity to really kind of set an expectation on how they behave and then how consumers will as well. So they've been able to show that they are stepping up at a time that everybody needs to play a part in being the communities that Caroline has mentioned. So even if this meant stepping away from their core, it's also meant that they've had the ability to think about their brand positioning, the service they provide and the access to customers. Increasing access I think is a really exciting one, which is all about the democratization of experiences, the reality of live switching to online, brands have been able to increase their reach. And I think the examples we've got here today give really good insight into that. Staying connected has been a massive thing around how consumers who haven't been able to interact physically have been able to continue those bonds over the period and I think this seems an amazing innovation and step up from platforms that hadn't had anywhere near the penetration really growing in demand and presence on the apps of customers today. And then the last one on providing joy for relief I think is a really important one that we've all needed to bear in mind over the last year to understand when customers are going through difficult times. How do brands make sure they tread that fine line between providing light release and joy in a very difficult context? So I'll move on to the examples to share in a second but one thing that I think goes through all of these and to bear in mind is the presence of empathy that exists for all these brands. So life has got more digital as we talked about through the arrival of lockdown and through the acceleration of digital adoption but brands have had to find ways to express their human side and show their empathy and this empathy is what really helps customers to relate to brands but helps brands understand what they can, the role they can play in the lives of their consumers as well. And I think should hopefully also set up a lot of these brands for success in the future as they build this empathy ongoing. So moving on to our first example and providing support of Burberry. Now I've included this as the first one and they're probably with the most visible brands to show up at the beginning where they really stepped up early on in lockdown and made it a huge commitment of how they'd be supporting community vaccine in hospitals. I raise Burberry as the first one because I think they were one of the ones most confident in showing that a brand could have a point of view and could talk about this but put investment and put their resources behind it. So they repurposed factories to make surgical masks and gowns, they contributed to funding of the Oxford vaccine and we also donated to charities like FairShare which were focused on tackling group poverty. Now this kind of messaging was also present on their home pages and across a lot of their comms just to show that ongoing support. On the next slide, brands like Uber and also recognised by Pret as well took the option of showing how they could use their platforms to really support NHS and key workers more explicitly. So promoting the services they are offering to them. So Uber used the hashtag great for UK and they gave away 200,000 rides and 80,000 meals early on in lockdown. Pret also gave away hot drinks and 50% of food to NHS workers. What's interesting now is that brands like Uber are continuing to understand that the role they can play uniquely by also pivoting to offering free rides to passengers to travel to mass vaccination centres and joining on the campaign by the Sun and the Sunjabs Army. So I think this just shows how these kind of brands have been able to show the empathy to customers around those people that work in the front line. Jim Shark have taken slightly different approach in recognising how the period has really impacted their customers and the people that they need most and that they cater for. So the gym where I start up decided to show support closer to home by recognising their customers were going through who were personal trainers by losing their jobs in the short term. So Jim Shark managed to use their platform to give personal trainers exposure and keep them working. Ben Francis, the founder talks a lot about the importance of being able to pivot in the short term and rally around the purpose of uniting the conditioning community. So they launched this fund for personal trainers and would livestream workouts to their 1.7 million followers and I think shows that they relate to and can understand that the lives of their consumers has been changed overnight. And then the last one in providing support is a BBC who are thanked for the education they provide but the media platform took a bigger role by recognising the unique role they could play in helping the lives of customers who were having to deal with homeschooling with the launch of their lockdown learning where they put content on TV iPlayer and online to make sure that viewers were supported over that period with content but also programs that were relevant. Again this is brands innovating and trying to be agile by even in the last few weeks networks like BT and EE offering free access to content without eating into data. Aware that not only are customers a challenge with lockdown learning but also with the reality of access to internet and devices in their homes with families. So if we then go on to the next one about being responsible this was all around how are brands showing the awareness of what's going on in the lives and the roles that we've all got to play. So starting with Nike are always themed for their bold statements and the purpose of enabling everyone to be an athlete. They really use their platform to encourage people to stay home and they engage talent like Cristiano Ronaldo and team like the LA Lakers to share the message to all around the theme of play inside and play for the world and all around showing support that talent training at home rather than on the pitch reminded us to stay home and look after each other at this point. Thai Airlines was a rather unique one where they really innovated around how they made sure that they were encouraging people to stay home and that's how they were gaining miles that they would use in the future rather than encouraging people to travel and showing that actually those brands who were taking a bold pivot and recognising that the service that they provided to consumers wasn't responsible right now they wish but one of their comments was that wish to stand by the side of all people in Thailand during this difficult time by urging them to practice social distance at home to stop the infection of the nation. I think that shows a real bold approach that these brands were willing to stand up and be seen. Sainsbury's identified the unique challenge that a lot of their vulnerable customers had and changed their whole approach to opening hours so shoppers could feel safer. So those customers over 70 could get priority access three days a week nine till 10. I think this all shows that all these brands have had to take a very unique and specific approach of what it is that they can do to support customers at the moment. The next one on increasing access I think is a really interesting one because it lends itself also to this concept of democratisation of experiences so where consumers have previously often there's been a kind of an exclusive sense in how people have been able to get access to experiences by being able to visit places or cities or restaurants where it's cost money that people might not have been able to spare. Actually brands have had to think very carefully about how they can make the experience they've got far more accessible to consumers through the way they set themselves up. So the first example is Chester Zoo who launched content live on their Facebook platform so during the day people could see live streams of what was happening around the zoo for entertainment for their customers and for families which I think just shows innovation from those organisations it shows that the world must go on and they still want to provide the joy that people can get from experiences like travelling to zoos. Getty I think probably won one of the awards for the most innovative and creative approach to how they engage their consumers over the period. Now obviously with people being encouraged to stay home I think one of the big challenges has been how have consumers been able to how brands been able to create ways to do innovative fun things that consumers would want to be engaged with to kind of spark that joy and that creativity and the Getty art challenge was launched to encourage people to be creative with three items around their home to recreate a piece of art from their collection. Now for many people this kind of art would have felt incredibly inaccessible before and they would have never visited the LA gallery but actually creating this unique content made people more aware of the gallery and receive significant PR due to the amazing visual nature and I strongly encourage you to have a browse of some of the creations because they're absolutely incredible but I think show that balance of doing relevance with your brand but then also empathy that actually you can have fun during this period as well. A lot of the innovation we've seen over the period has also come from food and this has been I think one of the biggest trends over the period. It's split into two and I'll start off with the example of again a democratization of some of the higher end fine dining restaurants and then I'll go on some of the meal kits. So first with reference you'd never normally consider that takeout would be a big innovation but actually the big step change that we saw with it restaurants that normally wouldn't consider the experience of offering food at home were able to think about how do they deliver experiences for their customers that again creates that joy in that kind of those special moments and occasions at a time we can't experience it normally. So supper apps taken Uber and delivery to another level so fine dining restaurants claimed that in the first week of trading in this new way like restaurants like Hain they were selling only 150 dishes but they recognized that this was a pivot they wanted to make. Hain then said that in the second week they took they sold 500 dishes but by Father's Day they were delivering about two and a half thousand dishes a week during platforms like supper and at Christmas they had 50,000 pounds of pre-orders of their boxes which were retailing at 250 pounds each. So you can see that consumers were trying to find ways to still experience these special moments with these restaurants but actually apps like supper were able to create an ease through the courier service that didn't need integration into things like into the other food delivery apps. So then the other example is restaurant kits like Patti and Bun and again where brands and these restaurants were probably less accessible because of where they were located in big cities in the past are now able to reach an audience all around the UK and that's been again through innovation of thinking about how do they get their services to consumers and make it really easy to use but engaging. So working with couriers like FedEx and DHL has meant that these brands that normally would have only been available through takeaways in London are now available to anyone in the UK who wants to experience it and through the community we've seen that on social channels and the kind of buzz that's created around these restaurant kits and many of these brands and these restaurants I think this will be a big part that's here to stay for them. So the next one and staying together and it will come as no surprise that I'm going to talk about apps like House Party and Zoom but at the start of lockdown when we were all used to and comfortable with using platforms like WhatsApp and Instagram they didn't necessarily offer the flexibility to be able to engage with groups of people that we were obviously lacking at the start of lockdown and House Party which you see here was one of the apps that in the first month of lockdown reported 50 million new sign-ups and it was number one in most of the app stores for the period and it gave a new functionality to consumers to engage in a fun way that took the benefits of the other messaging apps but it did it in a more social way that recognised what they're missing for the rest of their lives at the moment. Zoom will come as no surprise but Zoom took some very interesting approaches to encourage adoption over the period so we'll all be very used to Zoom on a day-to-day base at the moment whether that's for work or connecting with families but actually they were very brave and bold in taking steps to do things like lip changing the way that they offered services to consumers so they reduced or they took off the 40 minute limit to cap people's conversation time which meant that consumers could use it as a platform to talk to many friends at once without those restrictions having to sign up which encouraged adoption and encourage users onto the platform so and then at the holiday time they relaunched that campaign with Zoom together recognising it over holidays people couldn't be with their families but they could still identify and can still talk to them through using platforms like Zoom which were now accessible to them from the experience at the start of lockdown and last but not least even just recognising that some of the kind of innovative platforms like Thoughtful have had to pivot and think about how are people communicating over this period and recognising that kind of even the language that they're using just shows empathy for how customers are experiencing lockdown at the moment so closing the examples from the brand we'll just talk about the last one in that piece I'm providing joyful relief and I think the first one is Bumble and obviously one of the kind of interesting conversations around lockdown and around COVID has been how people have still been able to carry on dating over the period and I think brands like and dating platforms like Bumble have shown real kind of creativity and innovation to encourage people that it's still possible but to do it in a fun way and in a safe way so real life installations like this in parks recognising that this is what people's lives are like now has provided kind of light relief but also recognition that the dating world will continue and Bumble is there for them at this time. TikTok obviously had had its day or kind of was already having a big moment for lockdown but I think over COVID has really accelerated its growth and at the moment about one in three million bricks have the app installed on their phones about 24 million users I think what TikTok has been able to do is combine not just connection but also creativity and as we're talking about here that joyful relief and so providing things like the challenges to give people reasons to engage in ways to be creative at home beyond just the imagery that they're sharing and then the last example I thought it would be good to end on was just was Apple and Apple created a brilliant ad towards the start of lockdown which was all about working from home I thought that this kind of exemplified a lot of the themes that we've been talking about where they use an ad that showed absolutely empathy for what their customers were going through trying to go about their daily lives working from home but do it in a way that with humour that recognises all the conversations that we'll have about people being on mute and kids being in Zoom calls and families being around and all the challenges but within that kind of storytelling and that humour being able to weave in the world that Apple products can play and to make the experience of working from home easier so hopefully those have shared some kind of examples of some of these big themes that we think help these brands to stay apart during 2020 that essence of providing support and showing up for those customers that are impacted whether that's through job losses or through the experiences of things like homeschooling being responsible showing that we're all in this together and that we will have to play a part in the change that's going to come the increasing access so what that meant for democratisation so brands pivoting and understanding that actually there's an opportunity for us to speak to a bigger audience by doing something different staying connected to the rise of the apps that offer new types of functionality to the consumer and then that last one on providing joyful relief as well which is much in need at the moment so I talked about empathy earlier but every business has got the choice of how they continue to behave in the same way that all of our customers have a choice of the brands they choose and I hope that the examples that we shared just give a sense of the kind of creativity that people brought together I talked about empathy but I think I'll just close on that the empathy needs to be combined by a couple of other things so there's the level of empathy which exists but what really shone out when we were looking at these examples is the creativity that brands have executed and really pivoting in very difficult times and circumstances to work but to think about the different role they can play and then that point on relevance so what is the unique thing that there's a brand can do that other brands can't do I think that the combination of empathy creativity and relevance is really the things that's helped a lot of these brands stay ahead to the customers so I think that brings us to the close of what Caroline and I want to share before we go into the Q&A we're just going to pass over to Joel from the Fortune Hill team who's behind the excerpts from experts book that the event is in aid of today so handing over to Joel. Thank you even Caroline that was characteristically awesome and no doubt everybody on the webinar will have taken away something beneficial from what you've just shared thank you so much for volunteering your time and thank you to the amazing team at the CIM and you guys are absolutely rock stars we are so grateful to you for the support you've given to the marketing community's mission to raise money for NHS charities together's COVID-19 appeal. This is a hugely important and unfortunately topical cause if it wasn't for the fact that my wife is a doctor I'd probably only be vaguely aware of what's happening in our health service at the moment like most people I would have been insulated from the sheer horror endured by the healthcare professionals during the past 12 months our health service relies on people to function people who have dedicated their professional lives to caring for the rest of us our families our friends and our communities and what they're experiencing on a daily basis has been utterly horrendous and the scars will remain with them long after the global health crisis has been consigned to history for the rest of us most of them haven't even been able to process their experience yet they've had to compartmentalise their personal trauma in order to keep showing up for work every day to combat this disease and save people's lives I don't want to labour the point because I know that everyone is having their own unique experience in this pandemic and there isn't necessarily a direct correlation between your circumstances and the suffering that you experience personally but suffice to say if you're a doctor, nurse, paramedic, cleaner, porter or any other human being who's on the front line fighting COVID-19 your suffering has been accused and trust me none of these people are doing it for money nor the personal glory they're working conditions that are unimaginable to the rest of us and every day they're experiencing significant human suffering and loss of human life to an extent that was previously inconceivable NHS charities together provides vital support for patients, volunteers and the staff who are on the front line fighting COVID-19 it pays for them to receive counselling it pays for communication devices for healthcare workers who are living away from their primary residents in order to protect their families from COVID-19 it pays for things like wobble rooms to be built and wobble rooms are rooms in hospitals where staff can go where they need to cry and let out their frustration and it supports so much more back in the spring of 2020 the marketing community united to produce this brilliant book which was our way of expressing our gratitude for the efforts of the heroes on our front line so the leading figures in the marketing profession the people that populate the top 100 lists and wind can lines and stuff came together to answer questions about their careers to give insight and advice to share their views on great marketing and some silly stories thrown in for good measure all of this in aid of this amazing organization and the work they're doing for our national health service every penny from book sales via wordery.com is donated to NHS charities together COVID-19 appeal so please please please take a minute go to wordery.com and buy at least one copy while you're getting your own copy please also think about who else you know who might like to receive a copy or two if you manage a team then I'm sure every single member of your team will want one they'll benefit from it and by doing so you're donating $19.99 to support those who are on the front line fighting COVID-19. Thank you all so much for your support it's been amazing so far the initiative has raised nearly 80 000 pounds and we are absolutely fiercely determined to achieve at least achieve the hundred thousand pound target that we set when we set out on this mission and hopefully we can smash it out of the water. I'll hand you back now to even Caroline who will happily take your questions. Thank you. Lovely thank you so much to Caroline and Eve for that presentation and to Joel for sharing information on that important cause. Everyone watching live today will have received information regarding purchasing your copy of excerpts from experts and I'm now delighted to introduce our Q&A session. There are still time to submit questions via the attendee control panel so please do send those in and we will try to answer as many as possible so Caroline and Eve on our first question. Thank you so much for sharing so many great examples of brands that you've been particularly impressed by how they've responded throughout the pandemic. Do you have any specific advice for B2B brands on pivoting strategy based on the new buyer behaviors and have there been any brand examples in that space that you've been particularly impressed by? Great question. I'm happy to start. I won't claim to be as expert in the B2B space but I do recognize that for every single business whether they are B2B or B2C the person at the other end is just their customer and their customer is still experiencing something different and is having to deal with change of circumstances in how they operate but also pressures from different verticals as well and different parts of their business model so I think a lot of things that we show today hopefully are also things that can be applied within a B2B space as well to recognize that actually the organizations that you're dealing with may also have pressures that have come about through financial concerns and the business models are pivoting and how can your services adapt and how can your services evolve to make sure that you're catering for the needs of your consumers who in that case are businesses but still will have been challenged in different ways by the pandemic as well. Yeah I think to add to that you know some examples of brands I think you know have done this well for instance Visa sort of a B2B B2C brand they've done a big campaign which very much been supporting local businesses and when I go on their website they're actually I live in East London they're showing me local businesses that I know and sort of highlighting them supporting them so I think it's back to that thing of sort of providing support and being responsible and so I think I think that's one example other brands around productivity have obviously done very well so Salesforce for instance is kind of you know in a way in a great place but you know it's really pivoted and sort of how do they enable working from home and sort of the new sort of world setup in terms of like how people are working and they've sort of very aggressively gone after that and they're sort of advertising really about you know how to help you with your new setup and make what you do sort of easier and more efficient so I think those two good examples. Brilliant thank you so much and some of those brand examples most of them in fact rely on fantastic creativity and innovation which is something that I think some of us have felt have been hampered by remote working and being physically separated from the teams that normally come together to create great campaigns such as those how have you to both see marketers and agencies managing the actual process of creativity during lockdown how have people overcome some of those challenges and there anything you've been particularly impressed by? I'm happy to start on this one again then I'll have the next one to Caroline. I think I have been absolutely overwhelmed by how teams have managed to adapt and evolve over the period and I think when I was at ASOS at the start of the first lockdown there was definitely a kind of feeling of well we're going to go to this new way of working but actually it's going to mean that it will be back in the office in a few months and actually I think there's now a real recognition that people have had to take a very different approach and kind of mentality to how we work. I think there's often there's a kind of sense of creativity and like how are we going to still manage to gain the right levels of kind of creativity and collaboration to get brilliant output. I think you often have to look at the the positives of what come from situations actually where people aren't in offices as well and people can gain inspiration through their day and take time out to kind of refresh in a way that they wouldn't necessarily be able to do in offices so I've seen a lot of organizations really encouraging time away from laptops I think organizations like MediaCom are doing things like MediaCom Unplugged where they have a day away from computers each week which are just really encouraging people to make sure that they've still got the time to think creatively to spend time kind of challenge themselves on ideas away from just meetings which is what can easily become your time and focus when you're at home and thinking that you still need to be connecting with people so I think a lot of businesses organizations have also thought about the ways that they can provide inspiration to people through talks through sessions inviting people into some still things like zoom and teams but providing different perspectives to the teams who are set at home as well so I think it's it's encouraged in individuals and teams to be much more creative as well about how they use their time but hopefully the degree of flexibility that is offered as well has meant that creativity doesn't need to happen nine to five it can happen at the times that is important for the people that are actually responsible for it yeah and I think to add to that you know there's often also throughout lockdown there's been a lot of innovation in terms of different ways that people can connect you've obviously got zoom but there are sort of various you know webcams and things where you can essentially be in like virtual conference rooms I think the thing that you know I found and people I speak to as they really miss just sort of being in a room with people and sort of brainstorming and there are actually I think it's called Logitech and a few others and these and these new sort of technologies that essentially replicate that so I think as much as people can sort of try and you know not just be doing Zoom calls every day but sort of figure out different ways to interact you know there are other scenarios like Facebook portal is really impressive if you guys have used it and I know a number of people who kind of have that on throughout them working and then they just sort of chat to each other as it goes so it feels less like a kind of set meeting and more like you're sort of sitting next to them at your desk and you're sort of just you know have a bit of banter and catching up which I think is sort of a lot of what people miss these days. Fantastic thank you so much for that and another kind of couple of questions we've had are around marketers from organizations that were go ahead in terms of sharing resources early on and have now seen that their competitors are catching up and obviously brands are realizing that it is so important to be really keeping in touch with customers and sharing useful resources and help. How would you say that businesses can differentiate themselves in terms of keeping up those communications with customers now that it seems to be quite a general approach that brands are taking across the board? Caroline do you want to start with this one? Yeah sorry can you mind just repeating it so that I can just in terms of like. So what would you say that businesses can do to kind of differentiate their communications in terms of resource sharing and helping customers now that so many brands are taking that approach? It's a good question I mean I think a lot of it is sort of you know whether you're in lockdown or not it's really about sort of how do you continue to sort of be relevant and be useful and so I think a lot of it is you know communicating with people but doing it in a way where you're continuing to innovate your understanding where they are and you're not just giving them the sort of same thing continuously. I think it is quite tricky one because I think what's happening right now is a lot of people are fighting for people's attention and I think everyone's sort of a little bit burnt out and so you know there are certain things like calm for instance is the meditation app which I think is really interesting and what they've done is they're doing a sort of daily meditation where you can go in and sort of have like a daily calm and people are using that sort of on repeat so I think what they found initially where people were logging in and then you know they'd use it for a bit and they just log out and they wouldn't use it anymore but then they start as daily calm so they're essentially creating a habit throughout the day so sort of every day someone is using it so I think that's quite clever in terms of actually how do you get people sort of used to coming back to you by actually creating like a daily habit. I think if you look at sort of what Peloton is doing as well and you know there's a lot of push notives they're trying to get you to sort of get a habit where you get your buddies who also have Pelotons and you actually ride with them so you know I've got friends who have like an you know ADM Peloton ride and so they're doing that on a repeat basis so I think how do you actually become part of your consumer's life and part of their schedule is a way to sort of really make sure you're sort of embedded and providing value. Yeah I think to add to it just on a slightly different kind of perspective on the question as well that at the start of COVID I think we saw a lot of brands stepping up and providing statements on what they were doing and the role they were playing the likes of I think M&S and Bowdoin from a retail point if you did it really well to show again to kind of express that empathy and the kind of things that they were they were doing over that period but actually like we are still in this crisis but this crisis is not going to end when the vaccines have rolled out and there's our economy is going to need to be repaired and supported for years to come and I think we're going to move and pivot to a point now where brands are going to have to think about the role they're playing in supporting the future of Britain and the future of the economy the future of our young people who have had who have suffered without without schooling the period and then also impacts on things like food poverty and I think people like Marcus Rathford stepping up and encouraging brands to to play a part and again this is when Ari Burberry have got involved and supported him by showing that actually there's an awareness that the UK is going to move from a point where we are in the crisis to to be needing to focus on recovery and I think the role that brands will need to play in like what what can they do uniquely to help Britain recover if it's consumers or businesses is going to be important and eBay plays a lot of focus on supporting small businesses and making sure that those small businesses have a future and those organisations can still get the customers even when their shops are closed. So how does how do organisations pivot from recognising that at the beginning it was about things like transforming their supply chains to provide PPE to actually now it's transforming the supply base to thinking about how are they empowering new businesses and entrepreneurs who are trying to set up in very difficult times so I think it's going to be about consumers are going to be looking at what are organisations doing to play their part over the coming months and years to come. Brilliant and do you think that's a trend Eve that's set to continue potentially you know the birth of new challenger brands potentially more socially aware that better suited to this new normal in which many of us are now operating? Yeah I think there's been like there's been lots of conversation about responsible brands and brands with purpose for a long time but I think last year not only did we have the Covid crisis we had to understand and relate to but the tragic death of George Floyd and the Black Lives Matter movement also challenged organisations to say that we all have all got responsibility in the kind of the community that we build and the world that we live in and I think consumers are looking more for brands to take to be more accountable as well so what I think was particularly interesting last year is that consumers were very comfortable with scrutinising brands and saying but what are you actually doing and how are you making a step change and I think that was particularly true in the around the Black Lives Matter movement and the statements that brands were making it was really focused on well what are you doing within the organisation what are you doing in how you promote yourselves and how you support those businesses as well so I think we're only going to see it more because I think consumers have got more choice than ever before and the brands that they shop with because they've got access through online resources of who they choose to go to but also it's the old age thing that I always believe in that a purpose comes from serving a customer in a specific way in a need that they want but it's going to be the purpose that's going to differentiate you and your growth long term so I think we are going to see it but it's going to come from the right place and hopefully it's going to mean that the organisations are doing things that will fundamentally improve the infrastructure businesses and industries as well. I think to add to that you know what you do tend to see you know I don't know if we're technically in a recession yet but it looks like it's sort of going that way is there's often huge amounts of innovation during recessions so for instance Airbnb was actually set up I think it was 2008 sort of amidst the financial collapse what you tend to see doing that is there are sort of new consumer needs and you know when people start up they tend to be a lot more spendthrift you know they don't have a ton of money and so they tend to be a lot more focused in terms of their mission who they're hiring I do think also you know in terms of the shift we saw earlier there's a shift around fitness and there's been a huge amount of innovation there and around e-learning around healthcare as well and I think you know there are some sort of more traditional companies which have done that successfully I mentioned next so I think what they've done is super impressive but there's also going to be a new wave of sort of challenger brands who are sort of digitally native who either see opportunities or you know a better setup to deliver on what customers want so I think we're going to see a new wave which is going to be really interesting. Brilliant potentially lots to look forward to there then fantastic and so it goes without saying really that digital is at the heart of this at the heart of customer engagement both now and in the future but what advice would you give to those in industries where customers have been resistant to digital adoption? I mean what I would assume is that at this point their resistance has been worn down I think you know we're seeing I mentioned earlier looking at kind of cash in Germany it's sort of a very heavily cash-based society Germans don't like taking holding credit it's a sort of cultural Calvinistic approach and but they have finally shifted to credit cards and that has taken it taken over and you know I think I look at a lot of you know there've been generational shifts so for instance one example of a sector that historically has been very offline is gardening and say everyone goes to their local garden center their mom pops shots they like to see the plants in person but over lockdown there was a huge surge in terms of interest around gardening and everyone looking online as well and now there's a massive growth in terms of like online gardening and so I think you know there has just been this step change I look at sort of my parents and their generation you know they now are happily zooming with people and doing pilates online and the rest of it and I think you know it's been a bit of a forced shift and so you know there may be certain areas which are resistant but I think to some extent people just have to adapt to the circumstances therein. Yeah I couldn't agree more and I think that like at the start of the pandemic as well there was obviously challenges around especially in supply chains how people were going to cope with like things like online orders and the volumes that be going through warehouses but I think it's now become the norm and there's been a recognition about the kind of step changes this is making but it can mean that people are still using small businesses and there's often a perception that if you're using online you're using the big brands with big organizations but to Caroline's point you can still be supporting your local community and you can still be supporting the smaller businesses and local community by working by choosing to shop online. I think also we've seen interesting innovation even from the likes of the Royal Mail over the period for things like collections from homes so some of the things that we had felt were analog or hadn't were kind of fulfilling a need at the moment in one way have then been transformed to actually provide customers with new services that are fueled by people being able to kind of book those services online as well. Fabulous okay thank you very much and you mentioned just a few minutes ago kind of new businesses emerging as a result of new consumer trends and innovations. Collaborations too seem to have been a key way for brands to share resources potentially when they're operating with fewer staff and really extending their influence with new audiences. Is this a trend that you think is set to continue? Yeah I think I think digital for a long time now has been able to bring brands together in a way that they wouldn't have been able to live and occupy as well offline. I think like even the combination of the example I gave earlier of a BBC bite size and E giving free data access for lockdown learning just shows that actually brands are recognising that the kind of combined power of them working together can be very impactful so I think partnerships in the brand space is I'm trying to think of some more examples of it over the period but they've been able to show relevance because or they've been able to work because they've been answering a need by then working together and collaborating. I think that collaboration has been improved though by the agility that a lot of brands have been able to show over the period so things that maybe a couple of years ago would have taken longer to plan and then execute for all sorts of activity. Brands have had to challenge themselves and how they work and the processes they would normally go through and they've actually managed to pivot and change business models and agility and to the quote from Caroline shared from Reuters earlier have been able to accelerate change at a pace that they would never have envisaged so I think those collaborations have been amazing but they've also been fueled by the fact that people have been able to work more quickly and in a more agile manner. Fantastic okay thank very much and Caroline you mentioned consumers being dragged into the digital age whether they like it or not but it's not just consumers is it you know there are brands sticking to a bricks and mortar approach. Primark being probably the most notable example have been very vocal about their desire to stay on the high street exclusively. Do you think brands such as this will struggle if they refuse to embrace digital adoption as we move forward? Yeah I think it's an interesting one sort of actively resisted personally you know I think with these things things are sort of going in a certain way and they've obviously sort of accelerated and you know it seems unlikely they're going to move back. I think you know I'm not a believer that everything is going to shift virtual and everything is going to be digital I think you know with regards to remote learning and remote working you know from when I speak to people everyone says they're huge advantages there's a flexibility but they really want to be back in office for like a few days a week. I think the same is going to be true for the high street as well you know I think online shopping sort of is very convenient but it's not the same as being able to sort of be there you know browse through you know whatever's new and actually try stuff on in a physical location. So I think there's definitely a role for physical retail but I think it ends up being a hybrid model where you sort of look at your consumer you look at what they want and you adapt that. Primark obviously is hitting a sort of younger audience so it does seem sort of surprising that it's not going to shift and sort of invest a little bit more into digital. Yeah I think and I agree and I think coming out of this is going to be ever more emphasis on consumers saying that how and that the community is going to impact where they shop and I've seen a lot of research from this with people saying it really motivates their choices and where they spend because they know the impact it can have on the community and the small businesses so Caroline's point I think there's going to be the kind of in parallel the ease and the adoption of online services but then the recognition that actually people actively want to make sure that they are helping their businesses that make up the community and the richness of their community's airflow because it's also a lot of those businesses during this period that have kind of kept the communities going whether that has been helping to organize food drops of people or create new services so I think there'll also be hopefully an increased sense of loyalty and support for those small businesses to keep them going at the same time. I think this has hopefully just provided the opportunity for some of those businesses to experiment and scale in a way that they wouldn't have necessarily had the impetus to beforehand which can only help to build their growth for the future as well and give them choices about how they operate. I think another interesting example in the retail space so I read recently the Boohoo which is a sort of you know online fast fashion retailer has actually purchased Debanons and so you know that's an interesting example of sort of what was a sort of online challenger brand buying a sort of old story name so you know my advice to Primark could be to you know adapt to where the customers are otherwise they might find themselves in the same place as Debanons. Brilliant well if any marketers from Primark are listening then I'm sure they will take that. Tell me I'm wrong. No that's great thank you so much and do you think we are likely to see this rate of digital adoption that we've discussed throughout this webinar being so fast paced? Is it likely to slow when coronavirus recovery does eventually become widespread or do you think this is a trend that is going to continue at pace for years to come? Will brands for example backtrack on digital transformations that they might have invested in and adapt to more of a hybrid model that you mentioned Caroline? Yeah so I was looking at some data about this and they were talking about sort of the growth of e-commerce I think it grew something like globally like 34 percent or something last year which obviously is insane and they were projecting that it was going to grow 14 to 15 percent this year. I mean in reality I think no one knows because we don't know sort of where we're going to be I think everyone probably had hoped we would be in a different situation to what we are now and so you know my sense is as long as you know the pandemic is lasting and we're in lockdown you know it is going to grow exponentially and I think after that there is going to be a sort of high level of growth but it probably isn't going to be quite spiky and you know I do think there are certain things where people will go back so I do believe sort of physical retail will rebound but I think there's going to be a hybrid model and so you know and I really don't think it makes sense for companies to be investing all this time and sort of you know changing their digital infrastructure and building out their communities and then sort of go back to what they were doing before I think this has really been a sort of mindset shift which you know I believe it's going to be a point in time and it will continue so I don't think the rate and acceleration is going to be quite as pronounced but I think this is here to stay. I think as Karen I said I don't think the current rate of acceleration could even could maintain at this level but I think what we may see is customers so brands being excited or aware of the the agility that they've had and what they've been able to execute and the speed of transformation and what it's delivered to them as organizations and I think we could look forward to seeing some really interesting innovation in the years to come both from a purpose point of view the kind of things that we they stand for as we talked about earlier but then also in the space of like how they show up to customers and the kind of way that those industries are going to need to evolve to make sure that they stay relevant to consumers and in some of the conversations that Caroline have had we've talked about things like the travel industry and how actually that could completely transform from what we used to think of as customers being kind of going on holiday for a period of time and then coming back again and while that might not feel like a digital innovation or automatically digital acceleration it's showing organizations and businesses responding because of a change in how customers operate in a digital way so if people are working from home on working remotely that mean that that might mean that people are looking to be able to go abroad and have spaces that they can go and live in for periods of time and work and still do their job but kind of have experiences while they're there as well which is going to mean that we're going to need to companies will set themselves up differently because because individuals have a different desire to because the world has become more connected all of a sudden. I think another another example of that sector wise is kind of Peter I think everyone's desperate it's like go out to a restaurant and go on holidays along with a lot of other things but you know sort of the hospitality sector also is shifting a lot and you know they're desperate to reopen but I think what they're recognizing is things like you know instead of getting your waiter over at the end actually just having a QR code where you can pay quickly not only feels like it's kind of safer more secure in the current environment but also leads to a sort of significant increase in terms of table takeover and take home rate for the restaurant so I think I saw some data where increased take home by like 15 20 percent which is huge so in that scenario not only kind of makes sense to the customer but also makes sense for the business so I think we're going to see lots of you know digital and so innovations led into those more traditional sort of physical industries. Wonderful well I think that is the perfect place to conclude today's webinar as unfortunately that is all that we have time for today and let's say a big thank you again to even Caroline for those fascinating insights and once you leave this webinar you'll be asked to fill out a survey on the presentation and we'd appreciate any and all feedback that you can provide to us. As a reminder to the CIM members listening today this webinar is CPD eligible by submitting CPD you not only keep your learning and development up to date but you can also start your journey towards our prestigious chart of marketer status you can find more details of this on my CIM. On behalf of CIM a big thank you to Caroline and Eve for that presentation and to Joel for the reminder of why we're putting on today's webinar and a big thank you to everyone for attending today. Thank you for having us.