On our virtual lunch and learn event with experts from the eCommerce industry, we held a lively discussion on the impact of COVID-19 on brands and retailers. Our panellists Dean McElwee from The Kellogg Company, Sri Ganesh Santhiram from Victorinox, and Jeannette Potts from Isobar, fielded many questions from attendees. Unfortunately, we didn’t get to answer all the questions in the hour we had scheduled. We had promised to follow up with any outstanding questions and after catching up with Dean McElwee and we’ve got some more insights for you here. 

ChannelSight: Dean, thank you so much for your insights on our webinar and for agreeing to answer the outstanding questions. We received quite a few questions and we’ve summarised them into the following: 

Q1: What are some precautions that non-essential brands should be taking for online shopping?

Dean McElwee: Non-essential brands during the Covid-19 crisis should focus on the following:

• If you have an online webshop focus on optimising your presence as you will have above-average traffic and therefore are able to test and learn new things
• Review your execution, focus on demonstrating the value you can offer shoppers through your products
• Start planning! Restrictions won’t last forever.  Be better prepared for a time after restrictions are lifted

Q2: Will digital marketing go through big changes after this period finishes? 

Dean McElwee: I don’t think it will go through big changes after this period finishes.  What is likely to happen is that many brands will see the benefit of a cohesive strategy including digital.  Possible other benefits will include brands moving from digital as an afterthought to digital-first strategies.  As ITWC CIO Jim Love noted, “Sometimes it takes a crisis to turn people’s mindsets around.”  So this is likely to result in a change of mindset, which in itself can’t be underestimated

Q3: How are the brands managing syndication to all their scales, channels, internal and external?

Dean McElwee: There are many syndication partners out there depending on what your needs are.  Brandbank, Syndigo and Syndy to name a few. 

More questions?

We hope that these answers give you some more insights, if you have more questions or just want to get access to more information, please reach out to us here. 

For more insights and advice from experts watch the on-demand webinar or download one of our ebooks.