Even before Covid-19 hit us, it was already challenging to create award-winning content to break away from the digital clutter. Engaging content needs to be relevant, relatable and real. The question now is: “How do we continue to deliver engaging, creative content in today’s Covid-19 digital era?” The answer to this question requires understanding the climate we are living in and how it will affect our creativity moving forward.

How have creative executions evolved today? According to a write up on the WARC website, brands have to adapt to certain creative modifications. They need to display empathy about what the world is facing and they need to demonstrate they are here to help, not just to sell. Maybe they need to pull their most hard-selling price-focused messaging and start to craft new ads from existing footage to ensure cultural relevance. Stop and scrap creative executions that are not representative of the current climate (acknowledging social distancing and mask-wearing). Try and avoid specific lifestyle imagery (for example, no large groups, no travel). So what are some of the executions, themes or insights that have surfaced and which will have a profound impact on our work moving forward? I will share six key takeaways on how you can create new creatives for the new normal.

1 Use Existing Brand Assets to Make Products Relevant: Brands which have strong own-able visual assets connect with customers faster because they can quickly identify with them. We are all familiar with Ikea. What visual brand assets do they own? When you buy furniture from Ikea, it comes with this simple step-by-step B&W illustration direction manual. Let’s see how Ikea took this visual brand asset and adapted to messages.

When we were all told to “stay at home” Ikea in Israel came up with this inventive post. It is the most accessible set of Ikea directions you will ever come across. You just need a key, a lock and 100 rolls of toilet paper to follow the instructions.

Next, how do you keep kids occupied when they are at home? Can Ikea sell their furniture and make it useful? How can Ikea give you imaginative ideas to keep your kids entertained? Similar to the B&W illustration manual, Ikea Russia came up with a set of six instruction manuals that convert everyday pieces of furniture into playhouses for children. Choose from a castle, cave, fortress, house, tent or wigwam. Naturally, Ikea recommend using furniture and accessories from their stores and they are all designed to overcome family lockdown boredom. Ikea’s second visual brand asset is their catalogue. They turned it into a ‘stay at home’ workbook to address family boredom. It’s a colouring book cover. It’s also a puzzle and maze. The shelf unit can be played as a tic-tac-toe game.

2 Show Empathy Relevant to Today’s Situation While Also Retaining Brand Relevance: Heineken is about bringing people together through social drinking. But how can people get together in today’s world? Heineken created this content.

From air hugs to elbow bumps to 1.5m cheers, there are plenty of ways to #SocialiseResponsibly to keep bars open.

3 Be Understanding Rather Than Promotional: Promotion is not always about hard selling. It is about finding the right balance to find common topics which understand how we are feeling. A topic we speak about a lot is social distancing. Burger King created a new product that highlights this. By adding three times more onions, they named it the social distancing whopper.

If we are lucky, we didn’t get a pay cut. If you did, here is a great promotional offer called Paycut Whopper. Customers can choose the promotional percentage depending on their payout.

4 Own DIY by Creating Authentic “Stay at Home” Content: Over the last few months, user-generated content in social media picked up dramatically. One category that shot through the roof was food delivery. Here are innovative ways to use pizza boxes to create DIY content so that we can play soccer indoors – by transforming Pizza Hut’s brand assets like pizza boxes into fun board games. Want to drive a car at home? Turn the pizza box into an adrenaline-filled cardboard race track.

Here is content made for TikTok by a well-known makeup influencer who got his community to participate in the ‘Pass The Brush Challenge’.

Authentic content executed well is more believable and can sometimes connect better with customers than polished, well-made content.

5 Use Virtual Backgrounds: Sentosa created 10 downloadable virtual backgrounds. Everyone who downloaded and placed their virtual backgrounds on Zoom or other video conferencing platforms was effectively promoting their product while users got consumers to experience their attraction. I downloaded several virtual backgrounds and when the meetings became boring I was enjoying myself on a beach, or just enjoying a drink by the pool. This is a film by Stephen Graham for Barclaycard to promote their app. He created his own commercial at home using a virtual background. It’s a funny commercial as he wrestles with a green screen and lack of proper studio equipment.

Who says we can’t have a playful and light-hearted approach from brands? Brands need to entertain and distract us with creativity.

6 Strong Resilience Factors Should Underline Messages: Here is a brilliant example by Apple of how a brand can tell a story of resilience while demonstrating how their product was used during Covid-19. Human stories inspire everyone during this period and many of us have found new ways to share our creativity, ingenuity, humanity and hope.

Here is Nike’s ‘You Can’t Stop Us’. We build our resilience through failures and sports helps us to understand you can’t stop all the great sportsmen and women, teams or individuals. Sport unites us, strengthens us and keeps us pushing ahead. No matter what, we will always come back stronger – together. You can’t stop sport because you can’t stop us.

These examples depict how creative content can help brands recover from the pandemic. I hope you have been inspired by other brands in different categories which have pivoted new creative executions to fit the new normal. Let us reflect and learn how we can all apply this to our next content to make it relevant, relatable and most importantly, real.

Tay Guan Hin is Chief Creative Officer, BBDO Singapore. guanhin.tay@bbdo.sg