Blogbook
The Budweiser Coronavirus ad praises frontline health workers through the crisis, likely one of many ads to come from brands in this vein.
The Movies that Made Us is an extensive behind the scenes look at some of the most iconic films in the world, such as Home Alone. Great nostalgia watch.
Kingdom Season 2 is out! For anyone looking for a high budget, Joseon-era zombie outbreak film. It’s a hell of a watch, especially now.
Ugly Delicious season 2 is out, for people who are practicing social distancing at home. It’s a great continuation to David Chang’s hit series. Via Eater:
A restaurant is, metaphorically speaking, a chef’s baby. It consumes their life, demanding tunnel-vision focus, round-the-clock attention, and above all, enough love and care to justify working 14-hour days. But what happens when the chef has an actual baby? The restaurant, the cooking, the singular focal point — “All of a sudden, that changes,” says chef Tom Colicchio in the Season 2 premiere of Ugly Delicious, David Chang’s hit documentary series about food and culture. “You have something else that you’re responsible for.”
The Covid19 campaign by the World Health Organisation has rolled out across digital, video, and social media platforms. Check it out. You can also look at the WHO website here.
Robot Writers could change the internet — they’ve become a lot better at mimicking our language, writing long passages of original text. Via YouTube:
Language models like GPT-2, Grover, and CTRL create text passages that seem written by someone fluent in the language, but not in the truth. That AI field, Natural Language Processing (NLP), didn’t exactly set out to create a fake news machine. Rather, it’s the byproduct of a line of research into massive pretrained language models: Machine learning programs that store vast statistical maps of how we use our language. So far, the technology’s creative uses seem to outnumber its malicious ones. But it’s not difficult to imagine how these text-fakes could cause harm, especially as these models become widely shared and deployable by anyone with basic know-how.
When I visited the Duomo in Milan last year, it was packed. Tourists squeezed by the occasional local, taking pictures, piling into cafes, trying to get into the church. If you wanted to eat nearby, you had to dodge bomber pigeons and hordes of people hungry for overpriced pizza or Prada. Granted, it was near peak tourist season, what with the furniture show around the corner, but even the heavily armed anti-terrorism presence didn’t deter the public’s quest for the perfect Instagram photo. It’s strange to look at photographs of Italy right now, in the middle of an unprecedented country-wide COVID19 lockdown (for a Western democracy). An empty Venice, a silent Duomo square. Hell, it wasn’t that long ago that Venice was considering a cap on visitors to its adult Disneyland of a city. Chinese restaurants are shuttering everywhere. In Australia, the crisis has fed into an existing retail reckoning — the highly popular stationery brand kikki.k, they of the inoffensive pastel Scandinavian minimalist aesthetic, has gone into receivership. Businesses are suffering, and who knows when the government’s going to offer anything more concrete than an “Ask not what the economy can do for you…” sort of message. While the government has promised funds to help Australians through this crisis, whether those funds are enough to even slightly help disadvantaged people and the millions of small businesses rapidly going broke is will yet to be seen.
The darkest timeline is going to get darker yet in Australia. During a press conference, the Victorian Premiere said that the window for containment has passed, and that the pandemic phase of COVID19 is inevitable. Toilet paper has been flying off the shelves, fought over in a sort of Mad Max lavatory Thunderdome scenario. I’m starting to side-eye anyone hacking their lungs out on the germ factories that pass as public transport in Australia. Soon, Australia might institute lockdowns as severe as Italy and other countries in the hopes of flattening the curve. Vaccines aren’t due for a year, at least, and the peak is yet to come.
We’re not here to peddle conspiracy theories though, or to give medical advice. Check out official sources for those, and for Gods’ sake, stop spreading rumours about this being a bioweapon or whatever’s the piping hot Facebook conspiracy theory of the week. Put down your phone for a moment. Breathe. Now wipe down your phone with an alcohol wipe.
All done? We calm? Good. This is Starship’s Brand Survival Guide.
Pandemic Survival 101 — Brand Edition
If you don’t have eCommerce capacity yet, get it. Are you in the FMCG business? If you don’t already have an online shop, you’re far behind the times. Into the provision of services? Explore whether live video is possible. Need to set up either of those in a pinch? Give us a call. Online shopping is currently booming in China due to the outbreak. Via Inside Retail:
The boom has caused significant operational and logistical challenges for retailers trying to keep up with the surge in demand, including delivery delays and out of stocks.
“While China is already at the forefront of e-commerce and retail innovation, the current situation would further accelerate digital commerce adoption among consumers and will have a long-term impact on the consumer purchase behaviour,” said GfK China and India MD Vishal Bali.
“Chinese consumers are likely to adopt more options to consume content and purchase products and services online, including e-learning, online healthcare consulting or buying products through social commerce and third-party apps. Therefore, brands need to also explore newer commerce platforms, payment methods, delivery options and loyalty programmes to connect with consumers across all city tiers and create a seamless shopping experience for them,” he said.
The research relating to online shopping in China showed many consumers intend to delay the purchase of big-ticket items such as consumer electronics until after the outbreak passes, preferring instead to buy products to protect their health and wellbeing.
The same situation will likely apply in Australia if matters worsen. People will be prioritising products that they believe will help protect them or keep them well, entertained, and occupied. Is your business built on items that people are likely to delay buying in times of crisis? You’d have to adapt. As to delivery delays, you’d have to think of that too. Your brand will need to figure out how to navigate the arrival of your product or service into the hands of someone who might be self-isolating, in a safe and respectful way. Via the Drum:
One of the biggest changes that has affected business in China is the closure of warehouses, physical stores and supply chains. To mitigate interruption, organizations should be increasing the weight of budget allocation towards diversifying their trade and e-commerce channels, including the establishment of a self-run e-commerce eco-system with payment and tracking/tagging functions. This greatly reduces risk, and for international brands that adopt this recommendation early, the impact of ongoing trade operations during the outbreak may be minimized.
If you currently have any brand campaigns in place, you might want to rethink them if your business is going to be affected by the situation. With people increasingly deciding to self-isolate or stay home from events, interactive brand content that increases online engagement may also work well for your brand. Information should be succinct, catchy, and real: don’t spread disinformation. People are already functioning at a state of heightened anxiety.
A good example of a brand that was recently affected by the pandemic: the Who Gives a Crap toilet paper brand. As people went on their Paper Apocalypse shops, WGC sold out. They’ve been extremely active on social media since, with stock updates and with additional brand content built to alleviate customer anxiety and build positive engagement:
Don’t be a vulture
There’s a difference between preparing for the pandemic and taking advantage of it. People have long memories. Estimates indicate that the pandemic will peak maybe in May or so and be over hopefully by Christmas. Short term gains — like driving up the price of essential goods, or driving up delivery costs to make a quick buck — will cost you in the long run. Don’t be a vulture. And for Gods’ sake, don’t start reselling face masks and hand sanitiser at high prices. Do you know who needs things like that? Medical practitioners. Do you know what happens when they don’t get it? They get ill, then their patients get ill, and it’s a vicious cycle. If your brand does its part to help out in some way or other, it won’t just be good PR, you’d never know: it might help the situation in the long run somehow.
Things you could do to help your customers: exploring different payment options, helpful products, not driving up prices, instituting social distancing in your business to keep everyone safe, keeping your premises clean, and so on. For Australia to pass through this phase of the virus, we have to flatten the curve, and brands can do it too. Be positive. People are desperate for positivity right now.
Make sure you have a work from home system in place for staff
Does your business have a plan if Australia has to institute Italy’s current measures: where only pharmacies and food markets are open? If not, you’d have to be prepared. Does your business have an isolation strategy in place? Is it possible for your staff to work from home? Are there ways you’ve already put in place to protect your customers? If you have events planned where there’d be large congregations of people, are you able to postpone them? Consider all that now while you still have the time.
Don’t panic
It’s tempting to freak out. We’re very plugged into social media, and you should’ve seen the meltdown when Tom Hanks announced he and his wife had contracted the virus, followed by the NBA cancelling its season within the same half an hour. It looks like the world’s ending, but it’s not — and brands can do their part, survive, and come out on the other end in shipshape all at once. Want to know more? Give us a call.
Feature image by Stefano Mazzola, for Getty, from the Atlantic. See its photo series here.
Jordan Fisher recreates the dance from Risky Business for Domino’s, highlighting their new delivery alerts and GPS tracker. You’d think it isn’t new technology, given UberEats has been doing it for a while, but welp. Via AL:
Apparently, customers have been asking the pizza chain for exactly this type of head’s up on their cell phones, so they’re not greeting the driver en deshabille. (“We heard that from so many consumers,” Kate Trumbull, VP of advertising and Hispanic marketing at Domino’s, told a reporter from Ad Age.)
“Fisher reprises the scene from the 1983 film ‘Risky Business,’ when Cruise’s character Joel dances to ‘Old Time Rock & Roll,’ wearing little more than a pink dress shirt,” Ad Age says. “Domino’s and its agency CP&B did their best to match details from the film, even conducting a search for a house with a similar staircase for the shoot.”
Fanta has a new ad from 72andSunny celebrating “idiot” influencers behind some of the Internet’s most viral stunts and videos. Via AdAge:
The playful European campaign by 72andSunny Amsterdam, titled “In the name of play,” sets out to celebrate the real people behind “some of the most hilariously dumb videos on the internet.” They include a man who does giraffe gymnastics, a girl who specializes in snow swimming and a guy whose set-piece is wheelbarrow tricks in a skate park. There’s also a man who videos himself sliding along an icy road with a cup of coffee, and a girl who dances in big pants.
A 90-second anthem film, directed by Biscuit’s Jeff Low, dramatically showcases the hard work behind each so-called “idiot” and their real-life internet clip. Styled like a sports ad, with footage of them “training” for their stunts and speaking about the hard work, pain and injury that goes into their chosen stunt, and set to cinematic soundtrack music, the montage builds up to an ending where we see their real-life (silly) internet video footage. The campaign also includes a 60-second TV spot and several 15- second clips focusing on the individual influencers.
You might have seen people discussing Love is Blind, Netflix’s rather dystopian take on the dating show format. Haven’t heard of it? Read on. Via Vanity Fair:
Somewhere around hour six of Love Is Blind, I worried I’d lost all perspective on reality. Netflix’s smash-hit dating show begins as an easily dismissed pseudo experiment: a group of single 20- and 30-somethings, mostly straight, first get to know potential mates while lounging in individual “pods”, with a wall between them (just like in The Fantasticks!). Good looks and whatever other aesthetic concerns are out of the equation; these relationships are based on the true connection of conversation. (It does help, though, that everyone is good-looking.) Things get less theoretical and more actual when, after only a week or so, several of the couples get engaged sight unseen, only meeting face to face after the first proposal, then embarking on a fraught month of cohabitation on the way to a quickie wedding.