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Talk with the people at McKinsey about what marketers should be doing right now and you’ll hear about what they call a “three-horizon approach.”
To learn more, I asked for insights from Brian Gregg, senior partner at McKinsey’s San Francisco office and Jesko Perrey, senior partner at the Dusseldorf office.
Paul Talbot: One of the questions you suggest marketers should ask right now is, ‘How are we going to stay in business?’ Does this suggest another question, along the lines of, ‘What should we be doing with our marketing strategy?’
Brian Gregg and Jesko Perrey: The COVID-19 crisis is unprecedented. The speed in which it has spread and its effects on families and daily life have led to a deep sense of fear, anxiety and confusion. As the crisis continues to upend lives around the world, companies are struggling to understand the impact on their business and how to best respond.
What this means is marketing leaders need to anchor on what’s most important by being fast and pragmatic to manage the crisis, while also being strategic on how to weather the downturn. To do this, marketers need to take on a three-horizon approach and do them well simultaneously: navigate the now, plan for recovery and shape the next normal.
First, marketers need to manage the here and now of the situation by putting the needs and wellbeing of their employees and customers first. Now more than ever, managing the human element is critical, especially during the crisis, and you need to show that you are there for your people and customers.
Second, marketers need to start thinking about the next horizon and be ready to address demand when the recovery returns by considering how to re-architect their current marketing models, approaches and tools to get ready for the turnaround.
Lastly, this is a generation shaping event that will change how people think, consume media and shop. It’s too early to tell what the ‘next normal’ will look like, what behaviors will stick, what attitudes will have shifted permanently and what technologies will have firmly taken root in people’s lives.
Talbot: Because marketing as we know it has changed, how should the art of creating marketing strategy change, if at all?
Gregg and Perrey: Despite the shifts currently taking place, there’s a lot of great marketing strategy that needs to stay in place in our post-COVID world. However, this crisis has shown that the need for speed, agility and adaptability has increased.
For the many sectors where the game board has shifted, marketing leaders should keep their main marketing strategies and tools at their disposal while putting a greater emphasis on speed and agility to be able to quickly pivot.
The current crisis has brought into stark relief the importance of brands meeting the moment with authenticity. To do this, marketers will need put even more focus and rigor around their value propositions and customer experience through purpose-driven customer decision journeys that create trust, confidence, loyalty and differentiated experience wherever they are.
Talbot: What specific elements of strategy can help marketers strike the best possible balance between short-term adjustments and anticipating the ‘next normal?’
Gregg and Perrey: Many of the fundamentals haven’t changed. It’s the pace of speed and adoption that’s forcing a rethink. It is still important to have a clear point of view of where consumers are moving to.
Talbot: The need for agility and accelerated testing schedules to help keep messaging on target… how should marketers make sure practices such as these don’t get in the way of planning for the eventual recovery?
Gregg and Perrey: This is why we chose to name our approach the three-horizon approach. Agility is the core of any success now and in the future. You need to be taking in signals each day. If you’re not doing this, then you’re not able to even get past speed one.
As you get to speed two, then you are able to get a better understanding of what the signals mean and how it will impact your line of business. From there, you can begin to plan for the new hallmark moments that emerge from this and have properly trained the agile ‘muscle’ in the marketing body to react when consumers are ready.
