Matthew Schwartz

The traits associated with empathy have been part of the marketing mix for years. But COVID-19 has dramatically, and perhaps permanently, altered the framework when it comes to how brands communicate with their audiences.

Frank Cooper III, CMO at BlackRock, discusses how CMOs can play a key role driving brand purpose and the opportunity for chief marketers as more and more companies hire chief purpose officers.

The proliferation of chief purpose officers provides CMOs with a lot more runway to boost the value of marketing throughout the company. But as they bring their company’s brand purpose to life, marketers must take the long view and be careful not to slip into ad-mode. They also need to collaborate with other business units on the best path forward.

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.