As the light at the end of the COVID-19 tunnel begins to come into view, many brands will be breathing a sigh of relief. There have been countless think-pieces penned throughout the year surrounding the pandemic, with one word consistently appearing across all of them: agility.

Agility certainly isn’t a new concept, but it’s never been more important or relevant to brands. In a world that can drastically shift in an instant, brands that can respond in real-time will thrive.

Our recent work with the new energy provider Bright, has shown us first-hand the benefit of brand agility.

We developed a brand that was purposefully agile from the start, with an ability to flex our messaging across the core benefits of the Bright model: 100% green, easy to switch, transparent pricing, and innovative technology that works. Our tone of voice was playful, with a copy-led approach to our creative. Our launch messages were steeped in optimism for a brighter, cleaner future. We focused on the product benefits and the environmental benefits of switching to Bright, with everything being created to start conversations on social.

Shifting the messaging’s focus

However, a brand that speaks consistently about looking to a more positive future at a time when people can barely look beyond next week, quickly needs to reassess their approach.

The pandemic saw people rethink what was important to them in the short-term and our messaging needed to reflect this. Without compromising our core beliefs or our tone of voice, we shifted the focus of our messages to better reflect what people were most concerned about: price and value.

In a time when more and more people are working from home, the price of their energy bill becomes a bigger concern. The Bright platform gives our customers more control over their tariff through its ability to track wholesale prices, ensuring customers are always getting our best price available; this became our focus.

We know people want to use renewable energy and they want to feel good about their impact on the environment. But during a period of financial uncertainty, it’s difficult to focus on anything other than price.

We still kept our playful tone of voice and utilised it to quickly shift our messaging to have more meaningful discussions on social, leading to more engagement and ultimately more switches. By simply shifting focus from our cleaner energy benefit to our unique tariff benefit, we created the space to have much more relevant conversations with our audience.

Agility is not a nice to have

By tracking on-line conversations and monitoring the mood of the nation we were able quickly adapt our messaging. Our creative approach is consistent yet flexible, allowing us to create work that should always feel relevant to the current time.

Bright is both an agile product and an agile brand. As the brand is made to evolve and flex in tune with the mood of the nation, we will be able to capture the renewed optimism as we begin to move out the other side, into a post-COVID world.

Sadly, the pandemic has had a devastating impact on many industries, but the brands that adapt and react will survive and flourish in the future. Agility is not a buzzword or a ‘nice-to-have’. Agility needs to be considered a core business principle and the foundation of a strong brand. Agility does not have to come at the cost of consistency, so long as the brand puts in place a clearly defined tone of voice and embraces their distinctive assets.

What we learned from our experience is simple: by placing agility at the core of brand building it becomes a huge asset and not a compromise.