Survival of the fittest, agile working, flexible hours….how do businesses stay healthy when faced with such tough and uncertain times? Is it OK to try to capitalise on the current situation? Yes, it will be essential.
A perfect example is Mail Newspapers, who are offering to deliver the paper for free for 6 weeks. It will work for them – they are already seeing circulation increases (estimated up 20k this weekend and 10k Mon to Fri) due to high engagement with the content (Corovavirus, Cheltenham & Budget) but they are also offering something that could be highly valued to the generation that are worried about imminent isolation, keeping them connected with their main news source, but also for whom reading a newspaper is a hobby, pastime, habit that if they could no longer access could cause even more upset. I feel certain that this service will lead to circulation increases over the next few weeks as the story unfolds on what happens next. Perhaps other newspapers will follow suit, but the Daily Mail will benefit from being the first.
I think we all need to do the same. At AJ we don’t make money if our clients are not spending and our clients’ businesses would grind to a halt pretty quickly if they stopped advertising, so I will be focussed on coming up with ideas for all of our clients to ensure that it makes sense for them to keep spending, working with them to find pockets of opportunities. Being realistic we are talking about riding the storm here (have we not had enough of them already this year?) rather than flourishing, but there will be plenty of time to flourish in times to come.
Alice Buttling, Managing Director,