The Pandemic will change our world for years after the virus disappears. We’ll have to rethink and modify our purchase decisions, large and small. Some disruptions in consumer/marketer relationships that already were looming will come faster and more decisively. How do we define brand value? How should companies talk to customers? How do people function in an emerging gig economy where every encounter might be fatal? How do we redefine what it means to go to work or to socialize?

The virus poked the bear, and now marketers need to respond to life in The New Normal.

The changes that started well before the Pandemic reflect the transition in our society from a modernist to a postmodern culture. Postmodern consumers don’t always follow the rules that marketers decree. That’s because we don’t buy products because of what they do… we buy them because of what they mean. Today’s consumers define themselves by the brands they choose. Their idiosyncratic choices create a pastiche of meaning that gets updated 24/7. Marketers no longer drive the train, even though they can still ride it.

This means that the firm categories we love to use to understand our world – and our customers – are no longer valid. In particular, the traditional labels we use to segment consumers have stopped working. Today’s consumers are like chameleons, who change color constantly. They no longer sit passively in the tidy cages we put them in. The convenient dichotomies we rely upon, such as Male vs. Female, Young vs. Old, I vs. We, Consumer vs. Producer, Offline vs. Online, and many others, no longer mean very much. In the New Normal, we’ll see these cages open even faster as people are exposed both to new possibilities and to new constraints on their daily lives. Many of us for example will rediscover the value of community, and others will rethink the value of commuting to work everyday. In this presentation, we’ll explore some of these comfortable cages, and show why marketers need to ignore them in order to prosper.

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