Page 35 - AdNews Magazine Nov-Dec 2020

channels between the demand driving work that we do and then the more safety oriented COVID-19 communications.”
The open rate on direct emails from the Coles CEO was high. “People were really keen to hear from him as a leader in the community who was sharing really important information,” she says.
“And then we were looking longer term to see when we were starting to come out and get back into doing some of that more aspirational demand driving. So that was an interesting pivot for us. We did that quickly and it was quite successful.
“It was, as Steven Cain called it, a team Australia moment where we did work with our competitors on communications to keep our team members safe and to make sure our customers were treating them with respect they deserve.”
The supermarkets received special dispensation from the competition regulator, the ACCC, to do that.
“We can't just normally get on the phone and ring up Andrew Hicks [Woolworths CMO] and talk,” says Ronson. “When they gave us permission, we worked with our legal teams to make sure everything we were talking about was above board and wasn't giving anything away that we shouldn't be sharing with each other. It was very much focused on the comms. So it was a great collaborative approach in that regard.”
“We really had to pivot, lean
in and focus on different types of information for customers.”
Coles CMO, Lisa Ronson
Views differ on what changes to consumer behaviour will endure past the pandemic.
“The sanitisation stations and those sorts of things, they're here to stay, in my view,” says Ronson. “I think consumers are going to be always aware of their own hand sanitisation and touching their face and things like that.
“Will the panic buying con- tinue? Probably not, but we've seen little sparks of it here and there when we've had outbreaks.
“But I think largely people's behaviour will go back to a sort of normal. They'll just be more aware of how close they are to different people and their own personal hygiene.
“The online adoption is here to stay whether that's shopping online or whether that's going online to find information.
“We found a massive spike in our online traffic for both online shopping, understanding specials and great deals plus meal inspiration.
“And that's why we launched 'What's For Dinner' because we found customers had full pantries and they didn't normally cook from scratch.
“I think it was a phone call on a Saturday to our media agency and Channel Seven and we were on air Wednesday night.”
A big change for Coles was stop- ping its paper catalogue. “We used to print six million catalogues and walk them every single week,” says Ronson. “We pivoted that to Coles and Co and our customers are responding well. Our awareness figures are so strong for the relatively short period of time it's been in the market.”
Is anyone out there?
At broadcasters Southern Cross Austereo (SCA), with the consump- tion of radio switching from the car to home, Nikki Clarkson, chief marketing and communications officer, quickly adjusted the trade marketing strategy.
“We had a few challenges around the perceptions of radio in the media industry,” she says. Some were assuming that nobody was listening to the radio because car commuters were in lockdown.
Darwin Aboriginal Art Fair. Peggy Griffiths in her Legacy Dress. Photo: Grace-Lillian Lee, Chris Baker.
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