We’ve made it through another month of intense change.  Image 4, along with many of our clients, is transitioning from a Reactive posture to some level of Proactive movement. Universally, we see senior management across all of our clients working to adjust business process, respond to supply-chain challenges, move marketing and sales to a hybrid on-line and distributed model, and working to welcome back both staff and customers safely.

Like us, many of our manufacturing clients continued to work through the shut-down, and have developed a set of protocols and behaviors that have allowed staff to work safely. Importantly, as these behaviors and plant modifications are implemented and practiced, efficiency is increasing. We’re learning to work more flexibly as well as more carefully. Image 4 has distilled the best of the things we’ve seen and we’re developing a whitepaper on best practices which we’ll release in late July.

Financial Services

Our banking clients have shown tremendous capacity and leadership. Staff was dispersed, in-office density controlled, call-centers were expanded, drive-up hours extended, digital platforms improved, and the critical mission of providing financial services to all of us was maintained.  Some excellent adjustment practices and flexible work models have come out of the financial services industry, and we’re excited to to bring you some examples in the upcoming publication.

Retail

Several of our retail clients successfully made a rapid switch from physical sales locations to more robust on-line ordering capacity and developed robust on-line/social advertising programs. The face of boutique retail has changed forever – we see a dramatic footprint reduction, a shift to lower inventory and a “showroom” model of personal interaction, where visits can be scheduled to control density and potential exposure, FTE count reduced, and in-store/on-line ordering is supplanted by robust fulfillment activity.

How Image 4 Can Help – Inform, Encourage, Protect

Image 4 is here to help you Phase Shift, and to share a template for your success. Our Inform, Encourage, Protect framework has allowed us to reconfigure many physical and digital spaces in the past few months. Because Humans are, mostly, social creatures, COVID-19 isn’t going to obviate three millennia of behavioral programming, as evidenced by the overwhelming desire to socialize as shutdowns were relaxed. We will still physically travel to physical locations to interact in a physical way. For many of us, there will be some constraints – personal health, parents/grandparents/children with higher risk profiles. Sadly, some of use, myself included, have experienced the serious illness or death of close friends and family which will color each of our personal interactions.

That’s why, more than ever, the Experience a Brand promises and delivers will be critical to success. Each of us will make a decision to interact with a Brand based on our personal evaluation of risk. The Brands who “take care” of staff and customers in a variety of ways, such as variable service options and safe physical environments, will grow.

As always, It’s About the Experience.