The New Normal is Old as Greece
When something is always at hand, people tend to take it for granted. But when it is abruptly taken away it becomes noticeable by its absence, and this can evoke the need for something much more profound than what they had in the first place.
During the pandemic lockdowns over the past year, people did a lot of new things to replace the old things that was abruptly taken away from them — more online shopping to replace in-store shopping; more virtual connections to replace face-to-face connections; more videos to replace other entertainments; more take-home and delivery to replace on-premise and in-person; and so forth. But even as they did all of these new things, and digital mature brands flourished because of it, the longing for deeper connections has also been growing.
We see this in the aftermath of our lockdowns. For some months everyone was talking about the new normality that was awaiting us. And now we have actually lived this new normal for some months. And as I see it, the new normal is not about something new, it’s about taking back the old.
Old school is hotter than ever. Philosophy is back. Morals and ethics are no longer nice to have, it’s a must-have. Since the outbreak and the pandemic, we see the urgency and demands for brands to do things right. In the good old days, they built products to last. Technology changed that into the build to change. And what we see now is very interesting indeed. As choices and options reopened, many people — in fact, many more than expected — flocked back to what they did before rather than sticking with the new things that they were doing during the lockdowns. People missed a lot of what was taken away, and many people missed these things so much that they have been willing to throw caution to the wind at the first opportunity to go back.
We are seeing organizations everywhere insisting on using the word human to brand their purpose. Everyone wants to change the world. Shaping or building the future they say, as they are not happy with the future they are living in. So what used to be a reserved space for brand disruptors is now becoming the standard. If a brand is not engaging in contributing to the future with integrity it will not survive for long in this new normal.
Much of the talk about the post-pandemic new normal presumes that the involuntary yet requisite experimentation with new things during the lockdowns automatically meant that old things will be forgotten and dropped as lockdowns were lifted. But people have not only been exposed to new things. They have also been reminded of old things they never really had. And that reminder has worked as a powerful motivator in going even further back in history to find value without a best before date. The future looks a lot more like the good old greek days than new.
