Matthew Schwartz

Against the backdrop of seismic changes in customer behavior, B2B companies are taking major steps to optimize their marketing assets and cultivate more collaboration among disparate teams who share the same goals.

Mindy Scheier initially met resistance from fashion brands when she tried to convince them about the benefits of developing adaptive clothing lines. However, in just a few years she’s turned the tide, working with a growing number of companies to design clothing lines catering to people with disabilities. According to the World Bank, one billion people throughout the world have some form of disability.

Back to normal? Not so fast. It was just last month that the country seemed on the verge of delivering a knockdown blow to COVID-19. With millions of Americans getting vaccinated and infection rates falling rapidly, there was a palpable sense that the misery wrought by the pandemic was finally behind us. But it was fleeting.

Land Rover’s Defender Above and Beyond Service Awards were created to honor the return of the Defender model to the U.S. market and its long history of service to help those in need. But the program also serves as a marketing hub to assist nonprofit organizations and help them show the positive impact they have at the local level.

There are deaf people who like to use sign language while others prefer using their voice. There are people hard of hearing who culturally identify as Deaf and those who do not. As brands add more assistive tools to their advertising and marketing campaigns, marketers and organizations need to keep such nuances top of mind.

CMOs and marketers, forever spooked by balance sheets, lean on right-brained activities like imagination and intuition, but lack left-brained tools such as mathematics and linear thinking. As data management and online analytics play a bigger role in marketing and advertising, CMOs who don’t get out of their comfort zone could pay a heavy price.

Ear Community supports individuals born with Microtia (missing or underdeveloped ears) and Atresia (absent or underdeveloped ear canals resulting in hearing loss). Driven by a dynamic mother-and-daughter duo, the nonprofit is now on the cusp of achieving one of its main goals: mandating insurance coverage for people in the Deaf and Hard of Hearing communities.

A recent study provides brand managers with a window into how the pandemic has altered consumer behavior, as people take stock of their lives and recalibrate what’s truly important to them. With nearly 40 million Americans on the move and major changes in the workplace due to the crisis, marketers will have to recalculate their communications strategies and avoid “Before Times” thinking.

With the present situation regarding the virus uncertain, at best, we’re predisposed to advertising content that revels in the past (and even if it’s the not-too-distant past).

The growing investments in dedicated brand content studios suggest that CMOs believe their futures lie in entertainment rather than killer ad creative. As the trend accelerates, the challenge for marketers will be to produce the kind of organic, emotionally driven content that will resonate with audiences.

The notion of “brand purpose” was creeping toward the top of the marketing agenda well before the pandemic upended the business world. But amid multiple crises wrought by the deadly virus, brand purpose has taken on a sense of urgency, with few CMOs immune from tackling the issue — and helping to define it.