A litmus test for marketing

Budget cuts, furloughs, layoffs and business hits are just the start. Marketing will be put to bigger tests in a post-lockdown world

Roshni P. Nair

Mumbai

06 May 2020

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How do you survive in an industry that is left for dead?

If you are the chief marketing officer of a coworking company in May 2020, you look to a five-letter word that is equal-parts hallowed and derided:

Pivot.

But first, you reach out to over 35,000 people. These are your members across 67 centres. COVID-19 has socked growth projections in the face; there are no new members, and no way you can expand to 125 centres by 2021. All you can do is hold onto existing customers for dear life. So you start by assuring them that you’ll pass on benefits − in the form of monthly concessions − if kindly landlords and partners waive your fixed and operational costs during lockdown. You also talk about your new operational checklist. You created this checklist after joining the Workspace Operator Readiness Council, a global consortium of coworking spaces that’s being advised by two epidemiologists. You tell members about your architectural and operational interventions.

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