Laura Orcutt, Marketers Navigate Coronavirus With Furloughs, Cuts and New Products

Marketers Navigate Coronavirus With Furloughs, Cuts and New Products

Despite cuts to marketing teams, companies are relying on them to help weather the crisis and be ready when customers start leaving their homes again

By Nat Ives April 10, 2020 7:46 pm ET - https://www.wsj.com/articles/marketers-navigate-coronavirus-with-furloughs-cuts-and-new-products-11586562402?mod=hp_minor_pos1

Over the Easter holiday, I finally gave myself a break from being a line chef to my two boys and decided to order some food. I noticed that my favorite taco place had updated its menu to include ‘family packs’, and I imagined other restaurants have done the same. This article aligns with what we learned from Chapter 3 that discussed how to evaluate opportunities in the changing market, highlighting Denny’s current marketing approach. It was really remarkable to see how flexible they have become in just a month to also survive this pandemic.

Since they had to close their indoor dining restaurants, they have “improvised drive-throughs in parking lots at many Denny’s, started selling groceries at some locations and introduced family-sized portions of popular meals like its Grand Slam breakfast for customers to take home.” They are also looking into testing home meal kits.

John Dillon, executive vice president and chief brand officer said some of these new strategies were preconceived before the pandemic but never implemented for one reason or another but now they have no choice and its been amazing to watch the ideas finally materialize through decisive and hardworking teams. They also began offering discounts to those who needed extended stays at hotels due to self-quarantine from travel, or college students who lost their housing, or medical workers who wanted to be careful, so they aggressively promoted these online via social media. These are awesome, real time examples of Product, Place and Promotion being adjusted to fit customer’s needs as well as economic, technological, legal and cultural/social requirements.

One of the most memorable quotes, was from Spencer Stuart’s partner and practice leader for marketing, sales and communications, Greg Welch, who said “Across every sector, if you’re a head of marketing, your job just changed forever”. He stated that even though many marketing jobs were either cut or furloughed, the role of marketing has “only become more important”. Another interesting point is how some of these changes might become permanent in order to be ready when things start to return back to normal operations.

This marketing evaluation is also taking place across many other industries, notably gym memberships, hotel industries and rental spaces for office workers.