The "corona monitor" of the analysis agency Opinion, shows that 83 percent of Norwegians believe the economic situation in Norway will worsen next month. In a situation where the uncertainty is great, consumption will also be affected.
In Opinion's survey, 39 per cent answer that they have postponed major purchases of capital goods such as cars, white and brown goods or renovation projects. One possible strategy for advertisers may be to focus on branding, so they position themselves to take market share now and on the other side of the crisis.
Source: Hillier, Tony: Successful Competitive Strategies for Recession and Recovery. Reproduced in Ogilvy Asia: Making brands matter in turbulent times: HOW TO STEER BRANDS THROUGH A CRISIS Beyond COVID-19
There are good reasons to focus on branding messages now:
YouGov's "Brand Index" shows that corona has no effect on the strength of brands among Norwegians, when examining larger brands across industries.
Source: YouGov BrandIndex. Average brand score for impressions, value, quality, reputation, satisfaction and recommend. Period: December - today.
Schibsted's benchmark database
shows that with brand-building campaigns we manage to increase awareness by an average of four percentage points, as well as increase assessment by an average of two percentage points, across all campaigns.
In practice, this means that if your campaign has a coverage of around one million people, then the awareness has increased among 40,000 people and your product or service has entered the assessment set of 20,000 new people. In this time, with the formidable increase in coverage that we are experiencing, there will thus be potential to change the brand perception of very many people.