The world is changing in significant ways and marketers need to understand and navigate the new landscape. In our In Lockdown series, our Research & Insight teams from around the world delve into different sectors and trends, and share their learnings. Here, Werner Iucksch (digital strategy director) & Meili Yeo (digital strategist), in Singapore, examines the impact and implications of Covid-19 on technology & telecommunications brands.
Months have passed and the pandemic still has no clear end in sight; it continues to trigger an unprecedented demand and adoption of tech and telco tools, including innovative solutions. As we look into the role of how these brands are navigating the situation, we examine how they are helping people and businesses to adapt to the new reality, building equity and business in the process, as well as potential drawbacks that are starting to emerge.
Enabling Social Connectivity & Bridging The Physical Divide As people around the world are facing restrictions on movements, the importance of being connected through technology and using telecommunications services has grown. We are seeing an increase in internet traffic of 25% to 30%, which points to substantial opportunities for these brands.
Tech and telco have important roles because they can fulfil one of the most basic needs being affected by the pandemic: socialisation. By quickly ramping up product development and removing service/product caps these companies ensure physical distancing does not truly become social disconnection.
These initiatives are surely welcome, but they also become a torture test that have implications on the brand: networks are experiencing heavier loads and slow down in broadband speeds. In Singapore, a day-long service outage occurred in its second largest internet provider: Starhub, leading to widespread user frustration, need for discount rebates and official apology thereafter. There is a very strong emotional component that can not be underestimated, in case service fails.
Communication tools and services are the most visible facet of the tech and telco companies’ response to the pandemic, but they are only the beginning. Their response is truly far-reaching.
The ‘Class of Covid-19’ School closures have made tech and telco particularly valuable in the education sector as learning, exams and classes transition into digital. Technology tools have enabled and placed more emphasis on self-directed learning on students. At the same time, home-based online lessons have also sparked a series of viral memes, dubbing this era of students as ‘The Class of Covid-19’. These teens who have grown up with technology and the internet are also showing their ingenuity of beating the ‘remote teaching’ system. For instance, the kids of Wuhan managed to outwit their homework app by giving it bad ratings, and hence took it off the app store.
Teachers and parents-turned-homeschoolers are now forced into an online learning regime that employs collaborative tools to keep teaching possible. We saw how professors are crowdsourcing cross-disciplinary resources like the #CoronavirusSyllabus for research papers, articles, books, podcasts, films, and etc. Google also launched a #TeachFromHome resource hub for teachers to prepare teaching materials and stay connected with their students using their suite of tools.
The Race In Implementing Tech for Business Remaining productive while working from home has become a priority for companies and employees alike. Google searches for “work from home” exploded and now appear to be settling at a much higher level than pre-COVID.
The demand for collaboration and remote working has skyrocketed. Microsoft has seen an increase of over 700% in demand for cloud computing; driven by increased usage of Teamsacross different sectors, virtual desktop, Office 365. The same has been observed by AWS, Google among others, with free trials often being used as the key message.
This demand is also leading to new product development. Facebook, for example has just released Room, which aims to compete with Zoom and other business chats providers, showing how companies are getting a better understanding of the multiple ways they might increase productivity.
The same movement can be seen at Samsung. #StayApartStayTogether campaign touches upon ways of enabling meaningful connections through their mobile technology and devices – covering topics around work productivity and beyond: online learning, finding entertainment from home, to being in tune with one’s mental health and physical wellness.
Today we’re giving thanks, not pranks! Let’s recognize the people that have given us smiles, comfort, & strength during this tough time. Tell us who you’re thanking & tag @TMobile + #GiveThanksNotPranks.
The range of initiatives shown by tech and telco brands shows not only the dynamism of the sector. It shows how crucially important they are to our way of life. Hence, it is inevitable for this sector to get directly involved with the fight to stop the virus.
Combating Spread of The Pandemic and Misinformation Real-time information and news updates is a direct outcome of developments in tech and telco. Hence, the spread of misinformation is a concern to those industries. From fake cures to conspiracy theories, the surge in fake news has left many with a sense of panic – 74% of people have concerns over fake news. This puts a heavier responsibility on social networks to clamp down on fake news and prevent the sharing of misinformation.
Authoritative sources like the World Health Organization are ramping up on its efforts to provide important Covid-19 updates. They have employed various tools like WhatsApp chatbot, data dashboard, and organising a COVID-19 streaming concert to help us navigate through the crisis.
This race to improve treatment and stop the virus, often results in enormous data banks of very sensitive and private information. This raises the concern: is our data being handled safely and transparently?
The Trade-Off Between Digital Contact Tracing & Data Privacy As part of the pandemic response methods, many countries are implementing contact tracing to contain and reduce the spread of the virus. It is playing a huge role in tracking and monitoring citizens, helping in identifying groups of potentially infected communities.
The Path Towards the ‘New Normal’ Nobody truly knows how we’ll get out of the COVID-19 crisis, but the response from tech and telco brands has slowly shifted from showing social responsibility to bridging physical divides and building a sense of normality.
The technology being created in the areas of healthcare, learning, productivity has immense potential, and may well be a positive legacy of this pandemic. Beyond the potential to open new markets and create new wealth, the digital distribution of these tools can trickle down to places where logistics are difficult and enhance quality of life in more remote parts of the world. These developments may shape the perception of tech and telecom brands as positive forces.
The pervasive uneasy feelings towards Big Tech may become more moderate, but concerns about how our personal data is used by governments and corporations are likely to remain. We are now giving access to an unprecedented amount of private data in the name of pandemic containment. It definitely requires our attention and that of policy makers, so that data privacy does not become a long-term casualty of Covid-19.
For now, however, it is refreshing to see a few positive impacts of the pandemic, when looking at this sector. Technological advances are not only keeping companies running and people employed, they are helping to keep us sane and safe, but more important than that, they are keeping us human.
