There is no such thing as normal.

We are in the middle of an upheaval. Since the beginning of quarantine, we have been trying to “get back to normal” or, eventually, create a “new normal”. Several years into the pandemic, that hopeful concept seems laughably naive. But what if our concept of “normal” is flawed. What if there was no normal to begin with? What if normal is just a fairytale we create for ourselves when we are feeling nostalgic. There is no such thing as normal and once we accept that we can move on.

For the longest time, we defined normal as “one who conforms to the standard”, the majority. We have learned though sei-katsu-sha however, that people are not numbers. We think of “normal” as the old-fashioned nuclear family, but families have been “alternative”, blended or even found for generations. It used to be that your career was whatever your parents did, and then it was whatever you wanted to do. From staying with one organization forever, the convention has shifted to lots of moves from company to company. If “normal” is constantly changing, can we consider it “normal”?

What if we eradicate the idea of normalcy all together? Instead we accept that we live in a post truth world where everyone lives in their own little bubbles and you can find an entire community of weirdos like you.

The good news is that there has never been a normal. Normal is a fixed position and the world has always been in a state of flux. “Normal” has always been a lie. And now we can start to move forward without trying to replace what came before but rather forge a new path with what we have in front of us.

The World Has Ended, Time To Build A New One

COVID-19 has reshaped the world entirely. It’s changed how we think of work, it’s changed how we look at healthcare. It’s changed how we interact with brands.

It used to be, in the late 1900s, there was a “moment of truth”. You would be in the store and you could choose if you were going to buy one brand or the other. Then there was a second moment of truth when you used the product and told someone else to buy it.

The interaction starts in the store, but that’s the brand’s territory, they control the environment. Once you’re in the store you are likely to buy something. It’s a small battle to get you to buy a certain brand over another. But the internet changed all that. Now we don’t go to the store until we’ve done our research. There is a Zero Moment of Truth when you google the brand or look up online reviews.

The Pandemic took that even further, now you’re much less likely to go to the store to buy. You’ll buy from the comfort of your own home so brands have to do more to entice you. And to do that they have to think creatively.

Brands that had advertised on billboards and magazines weren’t going to get anywhere. But brands that created a pop-up on Waze? Suddenly they could lead a customer right to the store.

The only way to survive that is to evolve. And the brands that can keep up with the times are the ones that stay afloat.

Never Let A Crisis Go To Waste

Crisis can be a ladder. Smart brands used this pandemic to strengthen their ties with their audience by diversifying, expanding their reach, and even doing good deeds. Anything to stay top of mind and remain in the conversation.

Surprisingly, times of crisis are actually great for many brands. Companies can do very well if they are prepared to think long term and weather the storm.

Some brands cut their advertising budgets when the pandemic hit. This was a mistake. While it might seem like the first thing that should go is the marketing budget, the buying inertia was real. So just when people needed a push to buy things, entire brands were taking their names out of the equation and they ended up doing worse than the brands who spent on ads.

As the world changes around us, we have to move with it. Thankfully despite the lack of norms to hold on to, there are some things that remain the same. The laws of the universe affect brands just like everything else.

Marketing Follows The Laws Of the Universe

Amid a whirlwind of new information and standards, there are a few things that are unchanged. They are the three simple laws that affect our influence.

Law # 1: If a body is at rest, it will remain at rest.

Customers won’t be enticed to buy if nothing is enticing them. And now, with ad content so easy to identify, people are a lot more resistant. So marketers have to think of more creative ways in. The ones that kept advertising and even increased their budgets fared better than those who didn’t.

Instead of cutting their advertising budget during quarantine, Unilever Philippines partnered with Facebook Messenger to create a new product: messenger grocery shopping. They developed a way for Filipinos to shop via Messenger.

It worked!

They got 17,000 new Messenger connections in one week. The program was so successful they didn’t cut it when the quarantine restrictions were lifted. They just added a “pick up in store” option.

Law #2: Force = Mass x Acceleration

The more thought you put into a creative idea, the more you invest in it, the more powerful it becomes. You aren’t going to get any traction with a half-assed idea. People can sense it. It’s only when something exerts enough force that customers will be inclined to move.

The dissolving bottle created by BBDO was a great idea. All they did was create a shampoo bar in the shape of a bottle, but it made headlines. They created a website and started to sell these products — the idea was so good they didn’t even look for a brand to shop it to, they just made it. But it moved people, not just awards people, but the eco-friendly public. The shampoo “bottles” sell in specialty stores around Metro Manila.

Law # 3: Every action has an equal and opposite reaction.

Every post creates some interaction, and the more divisive the post, the bigger the impact it makes with people. Some brands took advantage of this to get attention.

RC Cola was looking for a way to stand out in the soft-drink category. So they created an ad that was surreal and impossible to ignore. The “Basta” commercial reflected how little the world made sense and it was a hit with audiences. It got so much traction, it raised sales by 63%.

Digital marketing follows these laws just like every atom in the universe follows the laws of physics. Even with everything changing around us, these rules remain the same. We just have to apply them to digital marketing.

Digital Swings Both Ways

There is an intimacy to digital marketing. It is a lot more personalized than other types of marketing. The people creating the piece of media aren’t trying to reach as many people as they can. They are trying to reach you.

This starts a conversation with a brand that could get you to buy, not just because you believe that this product would be the best choice, but because it’s already made a connection with you.

Digital is nimble. Unlike traditional forms of advertising that have to go through multiple hands to be released, digital can be created by anyone, in fact, the less polished the better sometimes. Organic content is much more convincing than ads.

We have surrounded ourselves with our communities and created bubbles around ourselves that are hard to penetrate, unless you know how to do Digital well.

Burst Those Bubbles

It’s a contradiction there is no such thing as normal, but digital follows the laws of the universe? Wouldn’t that create a sense of normalcy? Not exactly. We don’t have one sense of “normal” anymore.

We all live in our own worlds now. We create our own realities online. We have always gravitated toward the people who agree with us, but the internet has made it much easier to find those circles. Within these communities, we create our own versions of “normal”. In a Star Trek forum it’s normal to know Klingon, in a KPop FB group, it wouldn’t be.

It’s become harder and harder to penetrate these bubbles, but brands have to if they want to survive. So what do they do? They try to get into these communities, they work with community influencers, and insert themselves in the conversation.

In this new landscape, there is no dictating what you want your brand to be. It will be defined by the consumers who will talk about it online and tell their community about it.

The Online Revolution Is Here

The internet has become a human right. It is the great educator, the great connector, and so much more. It enables us to move forward at a breakneck speed. It facilitates new ways of doing things. The pandemic has driven our lives online. Despite being in lockdown, we were just as connected to each other. Some companies even thrived in this new landscape.

The brands that have managed to prosper are the ones with a robust digital marketing plan. 98% of Filipinos ages 16–64 have some sort of smartphone and we spend almost 11 hours online on average — out of home ads have lost their luster.

More than 82% of the Filipino population is online and most of them are shopping on social media platforms. Brands need to be on the ball with their digital presence if they want to remain relevant.

The world is a much smaller place now and we are all invested in digital. There are so many more touch points now that advertisers can utilize. Our homes are online, our cars are online, the internet of things has made us that much easier to reach.

Time To Reinvent and Conquer

Why is this important? Because trying to get back to some sort of “normalcy” is a fairytale. We have never been normal to begin with. We have always been in a state of flux. There is always a crisis to recover from or prepare for –what we should do instead is figure out what to do to change with the times.

We are in the era now where we can target specific groups and even specific people. We aren’t trying to speak to the majority all the time. Each brand needs to find out what works best for them and do that.

It’s important to understand that there is no going ”back to normal” and there is no “new normal”. There was no normal to begin with. All there is is one segment in a continually unfolding story. We are constantly growing and changing and striving, we aren’t going to reach a plateau and suddenly get to start treading water.

We aren’t going to arrive at a new normal. We are only going to keep moving forward. That’s okay, it’s always been that way.

It’s Going To Be Okay

There have been a few major tentpoles in history. The time periods that cleave time into the before and after. These are the Agricultural Revolution, The Contact Period, The Industrial Revolution, then came the Communications Explosion, and now the pandemic. Humans have weathered every storm and come out better for it.

Our lives have been changing for a while. The pandemic has brought those changes to the forefront and forced even more adjustments. Suddenly we had to work remotely, suddenly we had to turn to digital for shopping and spending and all our other services. Suddenly out of home advertising didn’t hold as much sway.

The internet was our lifeline during lockdown and it’s still blazing through our lives and changing everything it touches. And now we are stuck in this aftermath trying to figure out how to live in this “new normal”. But what came before? That wasn’t normal either. That was the aftermath of what came before that.

We have always bounced back from major world-ending events before. We weathered the great depression, the two world wars, Independence, and Martial Law. We just have to reinvent ourselves. We might take a while, but humans put our heads down and figure it out.

It’s all going to be okay. It always has been.