Twitter and Instagram are such big success stories that their path to success has been flogged to death. Many times over. But one aspect of their success bears repetition in the context of this article. The one factor common to both of them is that they all started off trying to do something entirely different than what they finally became well known for.
Twitter was created in 2005 as a platform to create, browse, and share podcasts. But 2005 was also the year when Apple hosted MacWorld Expos at three different locations, and announced podcast support for iTunes, among many other exciting announcements. So Twitter had to pivot to a completely new offering – a feed containing news and views of celebrities as well as the common man. And they never looked back again.
Instagram was designed initially as a location based check-in app called Burbn. But that space was then dominated by Foursquare, which had been launched a year before. They realised what they were up against after they released the app. But they didn’t fold up. Instead, they evaluated their own weaknesses vis-a-vis Foursquare, and created the photo and video sharing app we all know today. Facebook purchased Instagram two years later, and the rest is history.
Now, apart from the fact that both these superbrands moved on to do something entirely different from what they set out to achieve, there is one more factor common to them. They did not take the decisions to change based purely on instinct, although that is what many of us would like to believe.
Twitter began by asking its employees internally what they would do if they were to build a new company from scratch. They even spent a lot of time and effort on coming up with the name Twitter, which would exemplify what the new platform would do. Externally, they dug deep into adoption rates, technology, and the likely costs of customer acquisition before launching Twitter.
Burbn, the predecessor of Instagram, was also an abject failure before the founders took the decision to reinvent themselves as Instagram. The biggest roadblock that Burbn was facing was that users found it more complicated than Foursquare, which hampered adoption. Their use of analytics helped them understand their users’ behavior. They found that check-in feature was not what most users were utilising. Instead, a majority of users were using the photo sharing feature, which is what Instagram stands for today. That helped the founders to create the new avatar of Burbn, which became the Instagram of today.
All the above stories are from more than a decade back. Today, brands have many other tools at their disposal to gather and use insightful consumer intelligence, market information, segmentation data and so on, which can help them make the right decisions when things are not going as per plan.
The post Covid world is not something that mankind has seen before. Or at least not in a hundred years, since the world was hit by the Spanish Flu. Knowing exactly how to go about executing their strategy is just one of the scores of things businesses do not know much about today. In fact, at the time of writing this blog, we do not even have a vaccine ready yet, so there is no saying how long the nightmare will continue. But let us move away from the medical and public health aspects of this pandemic for a moment, and examine three major ways in which it has impacted the world of business already.
Physical Presence – The biggest change, mostly on the negative side, has been for industries which require the buyer or client to be physically present, like shopping malls, hotels, airlines, gyms, cab aggregators etc. For example, many hotels and airlines were forced to change their cancellation policies on the basis of booking and cancellation pattern changes because of lockdowns and travel restrictions.
Forecasts fraught with risk – A lot of discretionary spending has been thrown out of the window, because of which there have been unpredictable changes in demand for some products and hypergrowth in demand for some others. As a result, some entirely new product lines have had to be introduced, as this white paper by Accenture explains.
Route to market – The way companies can deliver their products or services to the customer has changed a lot over the last six months. Additionally, several changes have been necessitated to the supply side of businesses as well, to adjust to the new normal.
These are just a few examples that show why a post Covid scenario will have even more uncertainties and constraints than what any business normally faces. One way of dealing with this is to react to these changes quickly as they unfold, and then hope for the best. Our response to that is a quote that has been variously attributed to former US President Barack Obama, former New York City Mayor Rudy Guiliani, and many others – Hope is not a strategy. One needs to stay ahead of the game and take proactive steps to be able to take the best business decisions. Here are a few examples of things that every business should begin doing immediately, if they haven’t already.
Ask the Right Questions, to the Right People
People are spending much more time indoors today, and some employers might choose to continue this arrangement even after Covid. For a garment manufacturer, running a focus group for new party wear designs would obviously be a waste of time and effort. Smart manufacturers have worked on comfy home clothing lines which also look presentable during a video call, and customer intelligence regarding such new designs would be much more relevant. A business that continues to ask the same questions to the same people and bases its business decisions on those responses, is likely to suffer.
The Here and Now vs. Now and Forever
It is now common knowledge that the pandemic has dented consumer confidence big time, and there have been unprecedented changes in consumer buying behavior. But every business needs to understand that some of these changes are only a function of the times we are in, and will change back to what they were earlier in a few months’ time. However, some changes are deep seated and will continue for years. Every business needs tools to be able to recognize the temporary reactions from the long term deep seated changes.
Identify New Opportunities
Unless a business continually probes its prospective clients and current loyal customers, it will probably miss some new pain points that have arisen due to Covid 19, which could have been profitably addressed before others latched on to the opportunity. An interesting survey was done by MIT Sloan Management Review in March 2020, just weeks after stay at home restrictions were imposed in the US. 85% of respondents reported having shopped at a physical store they had never gone to before, while 54% said they had purchased brands that were new to them. Imagine how useful this information would have been to a brand, which was trying to make inroads in a geography or a customer segment they were not doing well in earlier.
Look at Yourself First
Finally, even before trying to understand the customers, it is important that brands recognize what they stand for in the eyes of its consumers, and make course corrections where necessary. We normally associate St. Patrick’s Day with unbridled eating and drinking, but this year, Guinness changed its messaging. This was a subtle way of encouraging consumers to continue buying Guinness, while also inspiring them to stay in touch with their near and dear ones. At the other extreme, Sports Direct shot itself in the foot while it was seen to be unjustly portraying itself as an essential service during the initial days of the lockdown. Relevant research is necessary to understand how a brand is being perceived now, vis-a-vis how it used to be perceived a year back, in order to shape the way it should be perceived in the following years.
There are many more insights that a brand should try to get in these uncertain times before taking major strategic decisions. The examples above are cited only to underline the fact that now, more than ever, it is imperative for any business to make informed decisions, instead of relying on gut feel or wisdom acquired in the past. Not all businesses will survive this horrifying year. Some other businesses will just about survive, and continue to limp along for months before the business environment becomes conducive again. The ones that will not only survive but actually emerge from the crisis as a better version of themselves, are those that are quick to read the market using all the tools at their disposal, and act accordingly.
Research is always useful and often critical, but a calamity is probably the time when it is also indispensable, for brands to survive, sustain and stay ahead.
About the Author:
Amitabha Das is presently based in Singapore, after having worked for two decades across multiple continents.
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