Context is king: Why brands are rethinking their KPIs

Twelve months ago Marketing Week found an industry rushing to adapt to the onset of Covid-19. Marketers had changed their working environments and practices. Some were unable to serve customers at all, while others could do so only under tough restrictions.

As a result, new KPIs were adopted to reflect the changing market. To cope with the threat, and then reality, of living through a pandemic for almost a year, brands developed clear strategies to help ensure resilience and smooth operating.

But, which changes have stuck? And have brands established some kind of consistency to see them through the challenges still to come?

TSB head of brand, content and social media, Keith Gulliver, says that the upheaval of the last year has brought home a simple truth – at least for now, context is king.

In the ‘four C’s’ of company, customer, competition and context, the latter category was often the most neglected, says Gulliver. But no longer.

“We had got into a culture of quite often responding to either customers or competitors, and the context bit had never hit quite as hard as what Covid has brought,” he argues.