“Christmas with your family, Easter with whoever you want”. This year the italian popular saying is more true than ever, if not also a wish, hoping that for Easter 2021 it will also be possible to celebrate with loved ones as well as with relatives.
The Christmas holidays have always been an important working moment, which sees companies offer commercial offers, promotions, product or service launches to users ready to celebrate by buying Christmas gifts for relatives, friends and colleagues.
This year, however, the COVID has changed the rules of the game, limiting, with different measures in Italy and in the world depending on the area, contacts with people and their circle of relatives (if not tenants under the same roof), blocking dinners at the restaurant, aperitifs, meetings and imposing a curfew.
From an economic point of view, companies: from March to today, therefore for about 10 months, depending on the sector they belong to, they have been hit by a profound crisis which has led to an inevitable revolution in budgets, work activities and relations between colleagues, suppliers and customers.
The holiday advances on Black Friday and Cyber Monday have had varying effects. Offers and discounts were not at all lacking with decisions in some countries such as France, to block multinational chains such as Amazon, in order not to further penalize local realities already in deep crisis.
What Christmas will it be then? How to celebrate? What is the best management strategy for brands and companies in this important economic moment of the year?
Deloitte in a recent research defined a possible scenario in K. On the one hand, the risk of the still stagnant and uncertain situation can lead people to feelings of anxiety and fear that are still strong if not increasing, with a tendency to save and little confidence in 'future.
On the other hand, the concrete aid policies by governments and the recent news regarding the creation of a vaccine could induce renewed optimism and therefore a certain confidence in the future and in spending.
Sure, COVID 19 has brought to light the urgent need for companies for a digital transformation to be present online, with a dedicated eCommerce, with social pages to communicate with their users and make their presence felt even in a virtual way: the home has become the new store!
Although in a more limited way, this year too there is no lack of initiatives for sweepstakes, games, quizzes that offer discounts, products and offers for purchases every day. For some years now, social advent calendars have also been frequent, where different influencers every day offer content relating to books, travel stories, words of the Italian language, beauty products, depending on their interests and their community. Or the influencers on duty show their followers the physical #suppliedby calendars or the result of #adv with the brands, perhaps showing famous chocolates or perfumes.
Furthermore, we must not forget the solidarity advent calendars, where every day we prepare something for food collections or basic necessities or we undertake to donate through non-profit organizations, demonstrating that it is important to help each other.
Even if everything has not gone quite as well as the screams from the balconies, to date, we try to go on anyway. Brands try to resume their activities, perhaps with lower budgets, but ready to relate to their users. And users try not to completely stop the tradition of gifts, even if from recent research the average spending budget of two out of three families will drop by 25%.
What is right in a time when many have lost their jobs and their loved ones? Finding a balance is not easy, but if brands are able to engage and be close to users, perhaps the magic of Christmas will not be completely lost.
E-Business Consulting can be your ally in managing your online presence and structuring an ad hoc strategy for your business, providing you with skills in the field of Social Media Marketing, Google Ads and Lead Generation, fundamental practices to restart in fourth.
