Getting prepared for the post-pandemic – Part 1

While the pandemic still forces us into lockdown to protect ourselves, our co-citizens and the NHS, businesses are juggling to adjust their financial and human resources and to look for ways to innovate their activity.  

In this context, it is necessary for these same businesses to attempt to forecast what their target consumers will expect when we return to “normality”. So, preparation is key. 

A first step to get prepared is to acknowledge that there won’t be such a thing as “normality” after coronavirus. On one hand, it feels naive to believe that things will go back to how they were before the pandemic, and on the other, it is legitimate to ask oneself “what exactly is going to change?”.  

The reality is that things were already changing before this unexpected health crisis. In fact, the practice of ‘business as usual’ gradually started to be disrupted by the awakening of world-wide consumers and sensitive leaders to the climate crisis that is threatening the future of humanity as a whole.  

Sustainability has become one if not the major trend in recent years, and the most future-looking brands are already moving forward to embrace it as “normal”.  

Examples span different sectors: from luxury fashion, with Gucci‘s commitment to cut down to two seasonless shows; to tech, where Google has pledged to stop funding organisations that deny or work to block climate change action and finally media, where Sky is aiming to go net zero carbon by 2030 through its Sky0 project.

These actions demonstrate how brands have started to make themselves accountable for the damage that a capitalist and consumerist society is inflicting to the planet we all inhabit.  

So, what brands will we look to after this nightmare is over? 

Hopefully a shared answer is that we’ll look for brands with a higher purpose, who will continue to act authentically in their everyday actions. Luckily, brands of this kind are rising, putting society and the environment at the centre of their mission.