Here’s To The Acceptors

As a branding and marketing agency, sometimes we are the last place businesses care to turn to when times get tough. But to the contrary, it is a time when your brand needs to rise up and be visionary as to how you are going to adapt to market changes.

Over the past several weeks, with the challenges and changes surrounding COVID-19, it’s become a time where many companies are being forced to re-strategize and re-engineer to become more relevant in the “new normal.”

While these challenges do present a daunting situation not to be taken lightly, what we have witnessed through our clients, and the message we want to deliver, is that there is a positive way forward for those who accept that this new normal will have ripple effects that change how people want to interact. 

Right now, for some of our clients, there is an urgent push to be more creative in how they see their business and how they can pivot to respond to what life might look like moving forward. 

We recognize that this doesn’t happen easily.  For us, as well as our clients.  We’ve stomped our feet and we’ve bemoaned the lack of what was.  A colleague recently said that we are collectively experiencing the stages of grief, and it sure seems that we are mirroring those famous grief stages.

And yet, what we have seen from clients who are already making positive change, is that they have passed the denial stage, passed the anger and the blame, and now they are at the stage of acceptance - ready to move forward and grow.     

We have witnessed this in a wide variety of brands that have reached out to us. While you’d think we’d only see this acceptance and re-birth amongst the crew set to weather the “Corona storm,” from telehealth, deliverable goods, online educators, and workspace providers, no, we are seeing brands of all types realizing they can do things differently to become even better.

Here’s what these acceptor brands are doing to become better:   

• They are being honest with themselves about what wasn’t working in the past 
• They are thinking big picture and seeing change as a way to improve customer experience
• They have already envisioned a world where things do not go back to normal, and they are operating from that belief 
• They are more value-centered than ever
• They are focused on providing solutions and how to keep solving them in a new way
• They are acting now, rather than waiting to see
• They are eager to be the first to show the world how it’s done 

We celebrate the acceptors and like ourselves here at ParkerWhite, we see how our own team has responded and rallied to keep the energy and team thriving during these social distancing times. 

What we’ve seen is that it takes acceptance of what is...and a little bit of creative craziness right now.        

Whether in health care, retail, consumer products, or personal services...if you are providing a solution and answering a need, people will not stop wanting what you’ve got.  They’ll just want it in a different, crazy, visionary way.   

So, will you be one of the first to pass through grief to acceptance and growth? 

Here’s to the ones that are working to make it happen now. And yes, we are all in this together!

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