As the coronavirus pandemic has quickly become the new normal, NDA wants to celebrate the positives of our current situation.
We spoke to Seun Odeneye to discover the positive possible outcomes for his business, Mediabrands’ specialist programmatic buying unit, Cadreon.
What positive impacts have you seen on how your business operates?
For me personally it has dragged me into the 21st century with the adoption of technologies like Microsoft Teams, Skype and Zoom, proving that isolation does not mean that you need to be isolated.
It’s strange because I feel like I have become closer to my leadership team during this period with daily video calls and I have genuinely seen us come up with some awesome ideas and produce great work for our clients. I feel the greatest learning we can take from this post COVID-19, will be how we can implement true flexible and agile working at Cadreon.
I believe we can continue to do great work for our clients when staff are able to work in the way that suits them; be it at home, in the office or in a coffee shop, and COVID-19 has allowed us to lay the groundwork for this.
What have you been most heartened about in how your staff, partners, customers or clients have reacted to the new normal?
I have been overwhelmed how my team at Cadreon, and the other agencies within IPG Mediabrands and Kinesso, have seamlessly continued to produce incredible work for our clients, despite life being turned upside down for everyone.
Personally I have been encouraged that staff, clients and vendors have not wanted to defer everything. We are still going ahead with what we had originally planned and I have been in monthly team meetings with 50+ people on Microsoft Teams, had a half day 2020 planning session with one of our clients and also been in a few ‘breakfast & learn’ sessions with some of our strategic vendors, all from the comfort of my living room!
It goes to show this ‘new normal’ won’t stop our industry progressing because consumers will still continue to buy and brands will still need to stay relevant.
Specialists such as Cadreon will continue to find the right users for those brands to deliver greater business outcomes, whether that be now or post COVID-19.
What positive impacts on long term consumer behaviour shifts will it have?
I mentioned earlier about being dragged into the 21st century; how many people do you think this has happened to when it comes to the consumption of premium news content from print to digital?
Looking at the latest online numbers for the top news sites, you can see unique users are growing and I cannot see all those users going back to print post COVID-19.
It is going to provide a great opportunity for more addressable media and will allow us at Cadreon to utilise data to find the right audience for our brands.
