PIVOT! If you’re a fan of iconic US sitcom Friends then the word ‘pivot’ probably conjures up an image of Ross handling a sofa up a stairwell.
More recently, the word ‘pivot’ most likely makes you think about businesses adapting or creating new offerings to move with the huge global change that lockdowns across the world have brought over the last few months
The world has erupted with ‘pivoting businesses’ and although the phrase is somewhat done to death now, you know what we mean when we say it. The positive thing about all this adaptation is that it’s pushed complacent businesses to make some changes.
It hasn’t just been SMEs which have had to scramble to make swift changes. Nearly all of us had to get used to remote working, online sales, and video meetings, including all the large corporates.
But with all this change and the 100s of 1000s of new offerings added into the mix, we started thinking;
“Wouldn’t it be great if you could bottle that lockdown creativity?”
Our backs to the wall…
A forced change can be a good change. For many businesses, and certainly the ones we’re talking to, they’ve finally got themselves properly online or added in that new IT infrastructure they kept meaning to arrange. The lockdown has moved the deadline to ‘now’ from the ‘never never’ list it had been on for years!
Those things languishing on the ‘online packages to do’ list got focused on, the marketing and branding suddenly came under the spotlight and lots of businesses were forced to be more creative than they were when they were comfortable.
It’s easy to become comfortable. Heck, we’re looking forward to a ‘comfort ledge’ after all this climbing, right? But we can’t stay there if we’re to improve and build on the businesses and organisations we’ve created.
What we really need to do is remember these times, and once a year, pretend we’re locked down and facing a global crash!
What you learn when you hit the canvas…
They say it’s not what you learn when you’re winning that counts, but when you lose. In every failure is a lesson, in every defeat is a learning to guide you in your next fight.
“It’s not how many times you get knocked down that count, it’s how many times you get back up.”
George A. Custer U.S. MILITARY
This virus was a battle. Even the politicians described it as such. We’ve all been battling, and in those battles we’ve been tested. Our business had to come out fighting, and in that fightback we learned new moves, new strategies, and even changed our shorts a few times!
It’s been tough… but we’ve learned a lot.
Imagine what you’ve learned in the past few months. Imagine learning and adding that to your business, brand, and marketing each year?
Recessions offer huge opportunity…
It’s well known in the business world that in a global recession lies a lot of opportunity and in this digital world – online now more than ever – it really pays to get serious about your brand and identity.
With the lack of ‘real life’ the internet has seen a huge increase in activity and those who took it seriously knew that this meant that their online marketing, social media, website, and content really mattered.
During a recession the best thing to do is go for it. Go loud, be proud, and shout your message from the roof tops (on brand, of course!).
Bottling the lockdown creativity…
You can create that lockdown feeling by planning ahead, setting large goals and building a brand that’s big enough and serious enough to complete those goals. Think about all the small challenges you had before lockdown and how you dealt (or didn’t deal) with them. It’s likely that because they didn’t post an immediate threat, other things that did took over.
During lockdown we’ve seen eCommerce side line projects be created in months and online offerings being created seemingly out of nowhere. You can do it when you have to. You can do it when you don’t fall prey to Parkinson’s Law.
Parkinson’s Law – work expands to fill the time available for its completion – meaning that if you give yourself a week to complete a two hour task, then (psychologically speaking) the task will increase in complexity and become more daunting so as to fill that week.
Ready to take that lockdown motivation and apply it to your brand or website? Give us a call or drop us an email now.
We’ll show you how you can take that inspiration from these pressurised times and explode it into the world!
