Be Nimble With Your Media Plans
By Julie Burke
When we were told on March 12th to work from home for the next two weeks, who could have predicted what was to come? Flash forward fourteen months, and here we are talking about returning to the office. Are we ready? Am I ready? I’ve gotten used to this new routine and let’s face it; I haven’t put on “real pants” in over a year. My dining room office has served me well, and I’ve saved money on gas and mileage on my car because my commute is a short walk down my stairs.
The pandemic has changed our lives in so many ways:
- From a personal standpoint, it’s changed the way we connect with others – virtual happy hours, car parade celebrations, and elbow bump greetings are how we interact with our coworkers and families.
- From a professional standpoint, it’s changed the way we do business – Zoom meetings, virtual conferences, and digital presentations are the daily norm.
- And from an industry standpoint, it’s changed the way we use media – streaming video increased, smart speaker usage climbed, and local news viewership spiked as we search for the latest information on what was going on in our own neighborhoods.
We are continually growing and learning as media planners, but the shifts in media habits that came along with the pandemic required us to pivot and adjust our plans as the world around us adapted to a new normal. We had to rethink our meeting strategies, revise our advertising campaigns to adapt to the change in media usage, and learn how to be nimble when it comes to creative messaging. We were called on to help our clients navigate these changes, be an available resource, and guide them through a time in our lives that we have never experienced. I believe we have come out stronger, more understanding, and more empathetic to the challenges our clients face beyond the workplace.
So, what about you? Are you headed back into your office? Staying at your home office? Offering your employees a hybrid schedule?
What learnings are you taking with you back into the workplace that are going to be a change from how you operated pre-pandemic?
Did you adjust your marketing efforts to coincide with the changing media habits of your audience?
I think we are all anxious to get back to “normal,” and while that “normal” might be different from person to person, one takeaway we should all have as marketers is the importance of being flexible with our media plans. What we carefully strategized and planned one month might be irrelevant the next month due to unforeseeable circumstances. It’s important never to “set and forget” media strategies, because the industry is forever changing and evolving.
Whatever your return to the office plan is, we hope you enjoy seeing your colleagues in-person again. And we hope you stay safe and healthy while you do it. To be honest, I’m more anxious about putting on pants with buttons and zippers than I am about anything else!