The COVID-19 Acceleration

One of the most common claims since the Novel Coronavirus kicked its way into our lives earlier this year is that COVID-19 is an accelerator.

Trends that were already slowly happening have been pushed into high gear far faster and more intensely than anyone could have expected, while other trends have been created out of nowhere.

The hugely increased power of Amazon? The rise of remote working and learning? The surge in social justice activity? Tens of thousands of Kiwi ex-pats returning home? The insidious effects of the COVID-19 crisis and the associated responses (or lack thereof) drove each of these developments.

Many millions of people have suffered immeasurably this year. The long-term effects of the pandemic will be with us for decades to come in ways we don’t yet understand. On the other hand, however, some people and organizations have made out like bandits. Take Jeff Bezos for example. He’s done pretty well. He added 13 billion US dollars to his net worth in one day earlier this year. Yes, that’s 13 thousand million US dollars! Or how about Eric Yuan, founder and CEO of Zoom? He’s made more than US$12 billion since March, with his net worth rocketing up a massive 400%. People in the right place at the right time with the right vision always do well even in troubled times.

New Zealand has fared better than many other countries, but we haven’t been unaffected by the COVID-19 crisis. The worst may be yet to come, as the local and global ramifications of the pandemic are felt. Right now, compared to many countries, we’re doing okay, but still, there are lessons to be learned from the current situation. For example, how individuals, businesses, and even governments respond to a crisis, or even just striving to have enough money to ride out the next storm.

But with the mindset that we’re living in “The Time of the Acceleration” (yeah I just made that up), there are some questions that business owners, C-Suite executives, advertisers, and marketers should be asking themselves:

“What’s coming next?”

“How could it affect my business?”

And “What else is going to be accelerated?”

The last question is an important one.

Regardless of our personal feelings and attitudes towards the pandemic and the way governments and people are reacting to it, no one person can control the big picture of what’s going to happen next. A simple case of human error could plunge New Zealand back into lockdown, and no business owner or marketing manager can do anything about that.

But it’s possible to predict the coming trends. Actually, it’s not just possible; it’s now critical because bad things will happen to the businesses that don’t get their predictions right. Remember Kodak? A once-mighty company that assumed film cameras would always be hot demand items. They were caught short by how quickly the digital revolution changed photography, and the result was bankruptcy. Things are moving far faster now, especially in the brave new world that is 2020.

Here’s an example: “Contactless” is a word that’s suddenly become a more significant part of our lives than anyone could have imagined. I’ve seen the Uber and Lyft pick-up lot at Los Angeles International Airport pre-pandemic and post, and the two aren’t even vaguely similar. The former was insanely busy, and the latter was a ghost town. Drivers are vulnerable to viruses, but automated vehicles aren’t. I’ve recently spent a fair amount of time with a Tesla Model 3. The autopilot was far better than I ever thought it could be, despite being driven on a small tropical island with mediocre roads and lousy mobile network coverage. This functionality can and will only get better.

Waymo has just launched a fleet of fully self-driving taxis in the American city of Phoenix. This is just the first phase – other companies will launch similar projects, and there’ll be lots of them. Don’t be in denial that self-driving cars and trucks are coming. If your business involves cars, drivers, deliveries etc. you’re in the firing line in one way or another.

If drivers are vulnerable to a virus, then so is everyone else from the people who stack shelves in a supermarket to the doctors doing surgery in a hospital. Corporations have long looked for ways to improve their bottom line. That often comes down to efficiency, which translates into “fewer people”.

This is obvious all over the retail sector. There are self-service tills at the supermarket, increasing numbers of customers order their fast food on terminals or Apps, and passengers check-in for flights using touchscreens and then drop off their bags. Where did humans go? Serious question - are these companies less likely to find ways to cut staff and replace them with automation now?

Global supply chains are shifting, politics is transforming, the climate change discussion is only getting started, and the ongoing social experiments known as social media and fake news continue unabated. And of course, AI and machine learning are the big change-makers looming over every industry.

What are the second-order effects of this acceleration? It’s easy to not worry about any of it unless it directly affects your business, but at some point, a newly sped-up or brand new trend is going to ripple (or rip) into your industry, and only the prescient ones ahead of the curve will thrive.

The mindset of predicting accelerated trends doesn’t magically end when the pandemic does. Whether “they” discover a vaccine, or we all get immune, or we decide to just deal with it, let’s assume that one day, COVID-19 won’t be the defining factor, and we’ll get back to what passes for normal.

So, what else is being accelerated?

Cities, states, and countries around the world are eyeing the old internal combustion engine and its associated tank of fossil fuels with a beady eye. Sooner or later, you won’t be able to buy (or more importantly, sell) a conventional motor vehicle. But are we talking sooner or later? California and the City of London are looking at 2035 as a cut off date, with other counties such as Austria and Norway aiming to go for it even sooner.

That’s going to affect car and truck manufacturers in a big way, but they’ve got the resources to pivot. What about the many industries that support the motor vehicle sector? If you own a small chain of petrol stations, well, you might want to be considering this, as I’m sure many are. What about suppliers of car parts? What’s their pivot in a world of vehicles with far less moving parts to wear out and break?

On the other side of this coin lies the fact that electric cars run on electricity (obviously). Less obvious is the fact that no power grid in the world is up to dealing with every vehicle being switched to electric power as fossil fuels get phased out. Massive investments in infrastructure and technology are needed. Can your business capitalize on this paradigm shift? If not, should you be starting one that can, or should you be finding a job in an industry that won’t be dead in 10 years?

I’ll go into all of this in more detail in future posts but to cut a long story short, enormous changes are coming at multiple levels, they’re coming fast, and they’ll affect us all. If you think your business or your job isn’t going to be affected, you’re probably wrong. And if your marketing team or advertising agency aren’t looking at these issues and bringing you the information you need to make better decisions, you’ll likely end up struggling somewhere down the track.