What is the shape of the new marketing team? I think what shapes the new marketing team is undoubtedly the new demands placed on business around not only health and safety, but also sensibility, honesty and efficiency.

Looking at each of these points in more detail can guide us to define and structure marketing throughout our businesses.

Health and safety has been raised to a level where standards are not simply meeting compliance and regulation but where they are seen as part of the value proposition set. That is, valued and a differentiator, either to attract new customers or reward existing loyal customers. Airlines’ and hotels’ range of offerings is increasing in this area from hygiene packs to additional space to personal controls to apps.

Consumer trends have continued to move towards greater levels of sensitivity. Sensitivity in terms of answering real needs with real solutions with greater and genuine care as well as pragmatism. The recent challenges in global health and social concerns have only provided more momentum here.

Honesty has always been paramount and with greater digitisation transparency has been inevitable. However, the benefits of honesty, other than simple moral grounds, have spread throughout many industries to deliver greater customer loyalty. I have seen, with the wave of restaurants starting up again, that staff are consciously giving honest information to manage expectations around possible slower service and availability of choices.

Notably, expertise is required through all these disciplines regardless of organisation size. Whilst marketing fundamentals remain constant the agility with which we must operate now has significantly stepped up. We are seeing businesses take the opportunity to dictate the marketing resource they require on a flexible basis such as buying into two or three days per week marketing support in order to gain a specialism or seniority at a fraction of the cost of the full time average.

Larger businesses are pulling on individual specialists across several disciplines rather than a generalist. These agile teams look to offer a new level of efficiency across all sizes of businesses. Managing these flexing teams requires attention, but the benefits can be significant.

At IM London, we are supporting clients with a range of marketing plans. If you need marketing support please call or email, we would be delighted to discuss.