How COVID Has Influenced Creative Thinking in Marketing

When looking back at the last year, have you picked up a new hobby or skill? Shortly after COVID hit and lockdowns were implemented, people had to get creative to fill the time that we’d usually spend going out and about. Some people turned to learning how to knit, others started home renovations, and lots of people pursued online courses. With such a big shift in our reality, we had the opportunity to get more creative in filling time. So how has COVID influenced that creative thinking in marketing specifically? 

Are People Getting More Creative?

Lots of people have learned new hobbies or revisited old hobbies in the past year for a couple of reasons, but the one I’m going to talk about in this section is curiosity. Some studies are saying the surge in the hobby uptick mirrors what happened during the Great Depression because people are home, want to fill time, and are influenced by curiosity. We’ve all seen someone portray a hobby or skill, such as knitting, that made us think, “Wow, I wonder how they do that?” For the past year, a lot of us had time to explore that curiosity and learn how to do it ourselves.

So how does this translate to creative thinking in marketing? People are getting more curious about learning new skills that will have a positive impact once the world starts opening back up. For example, small business owners might have wanted to learn how to expand their marketing efforts to regain the business they lost due to the pandemic. This could have led them to learn how to adapt their marketing strategy to current trends, as well as trends that came from COVID but might have a lasting effect for years to come. Curiosity and adaptability are leading to more ideas and strategies being implemented and shared across the marketing industry.

How Has Technology Improved Our Creativity?

From a remote workforce perspective, all of our work and communication would not be possible without the technology we have access to today. With a heavy reliance on technology, marketers are getting better at analyzing the data we are given. 2020 posed a lot of interesting consumer trends. Not only are we buying more things online, but we are also getting smarter about how and where we spend our money. As consumers, we are doing more research before buying. As marketers, we are getting better at recognizing these buying patterns and getting more creative in how we marketing to the consumer to accommodate the growing research phase, while also figuring out how to stay top-of-mind. Creative thinking in marketing has become imperative in the past year because of the unpredictability of buying trends; we can’t rely as heavily on seasonality and other trends we’d see in a normal year. Learning how to market to our audiences is a skill we’ve gotten more creative with.

Conclusion

To put it lightly, this past year has been unpredictable, but there are some positive takeaways. Marketers are learning how to adapt their skills to create more meaningful and impactful strategies. With this, we’re using technology and data more efficiently to learn more about our audiences and their needs and writing content that fits the shift in buying trends. These new skills we’ve learned will stay with us as we return to a sense of normalcy and will hopefully be shared and built upon. If you’re curious about our marketing creativity, contact us at Top Floor and we’d be happy to help!