During these weeks of confinement due to COVID-19, social media and messaging apps have been overflowing with interactions while brands have been trying to find their own voice. Amid threats of opportunism, almost all have been debating the need for relevance and a desire to contribute to society.
Only those with a purpose they share with their stakeholders – but also a clearer profile than those who were promoting or defending their brand – felt confident enough to successfully respond to this crisis from the outset.
They knew that their ideas were going to reach people who defended them against critics. They knew this because they had been listening to their expectations, understanding their motivations and forming part of their networks of influence for some time already.
We saw this at companies where leaders were used to presenting their ideas and positions on social media, such as Microsoft through Satya Nadella and Telefónica through José María Álvarez-Pallete. We have seen this at companies that base their business models on the constant analysis of customer needs, such as Inditex and Mercadona.
All these brands are used to listening, to filtering relevant information and concentrating on that which generates shared value. These are just some of the brands that produced an exemplary response to the coronavirus crisis.
How to discover winning strategies from among all the noise online
This second installment of the “Five Post-digital Communication Challenges” is precisely about that way of listening and analyzing data. The challenge that stems from an urgency to evolve towards a way of listening that is capable of revealing to us opportunities beyond the crisis from among the vast amount of online data. A pressing need in the ever more digitalized context we have today; which is increasingly volatile, uncertain, complex and ambiguous.
