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Watch: Covid-19 Future Planning Webinar

Covid-19 Future Planning Webinar

Now, more than ever, brands or organisations like yours must be prepared for a future in which you help humankind to feel secure, supported and inspired. That’s why we’ve filmed an exclusive webinar to equip our members with the strategic foresight needed to quickly recover, recalibrate and rewrite old ways of thinking.

In this 30-minute Covid-19 Future Planning Webinar our futures analyst, Victoria Buchanan, talks you through an analysis of the global pandemic’s impact, and the steps you need to take to build future-proof strategies that turn uncertainty into meaningful actions.

The webinar examines how Covid-19 has rapidly influenced sectors including retail, travel and hospitality, health and wellness, food and drink, media and entertainment, and luxury. It also provides a set of practical Lab Notes to guide your business through the crucial next steps to survive and thrive into the future.

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Learn: Covid-19 Contingency Planning

Fusion Medical Animation

In our Covid-19 Contingency Planning report, first launched in March, we revealed some of the immediate global impacts and positive actions seen across key consumer sectors.

Crucially, Covid-19 is driving positive behaviour among both brands and consumers. Around the world, Civic Brands are drawing on their expertise, supply chains and services to help governments and communities mitigate its impact. Elsewhere, a Post-growth mindset is emerging as humans recognise that wasteful materialism and ostentatious lifestyles lack meaning in such times of crisis.

'This is a hard, unsettling reset – but it will result in positive, unprecedented changes in how ordinary people behave and interact,' says Martin Raymond, co-founder of The Future Laboratory. 'If businesses aren’t prepared for this, in many ways they deserve to become the casualties of a new paradigm shift in how we broker the way we live, work and play.'

Read the report in full to discover the industry impacts and implications for brands and organisations in six sectors including Retail, Travel & Hospitality, Food & Drink and Luxury.

Read: The new possibilities brought by Covid-19

Our recent Opinion piece by Victoria Buchanan examines the emerging opportunities and potential for collective action amid Covid-19.

‘Coronavirus is forcing the world to act, despite being severely constrained by unknowns and uncertainties,’ writes Buchanan. ‘While the pandemic is hugely unsettling and worrying, it is also an opportunity for organisations, businesses and communities to test their resilience while exploring new and more agile systems fit for a transformative 21st century.

‘Despite the challenges they face, brands are also stepping up to their civic responsibilities by helping governments and public institutions to navigate the crisis. Luxury goods group LVMH, for example, drew on its manufacturers to swiftly produce hand sanitiser, which it donated to French hospitals.

‘Yes, the daily sense of anxiety feels like it might never end but the foresight professional in me is already looking to the future,’ adds Buchanan. ‘We are realising the power of collective action, and perhaps in this chaos there is a window of opportunity that we can seize in order to rewrite old ways of thinking.’

The full Opinion piece, Covid-19 has brought chaos – and vast new possibilities, can be read here.

Casa by Mathery

Discuss: Has Covid-19 has made travel meaningless?

Stay Home by Jennifer Baer

Written by Holly Friend, LS:N Global's Travel & Hospitality sector lead, our recent Opinion piece ponders the opportunity that Covid-19 has granted the travel sector, giving brands time to contemplate – and moralise – their existence.

'This global crisis has come at a surprisingly fitting time,' writes Friend. 'After all, it’s the dawn of a new decade, and consumers and brands are in a state of reflection, introspection and contemplation. And while it may be challenging for those in the travel and hospitality sector to see this pandemic as a much-needed societal reset, it’s important that they do.

'The pandemic is also fast-tracking a greater examination of why we travel at all. Consumers are aware of the positive impacts of Covid-19 on the climate, having witnessed China’s lesser-polluted cities, wildlife wandering into Welsh villages and seabirds returning to Venice’s cleaner canals,' Friend adds. 'Consumers will be cautious to undo such groundbreaking environmental benefits. Rather than being seduced by the draw of budget flights, many will have had the time and space to contemplate their unethical travel behaviour.'

Will travel be entirely re-shaped by Covid-19? Read the Opinion piece here, and open discussions with your team.