How the coronavirus is impacting ad spending, brand recognition

BigEyedWish Founder and Host of Adweek’s ‘I’m With the Brand’ Ian Wishingrad joins Yahoo Finance’s Zack Guzman to discuss how the coronavirus outbreak is impacting companies' ad spending, despite many Americans staying in their homes.

Video Transcript

ZACK GUZMAN: In response, it's not just the government trying to react to the slowdown here on the economic front regarding coronavirus cases and the way the economy shut down. Brands have also been stepping up to do their part as well. And it's not just Apple. Tim Cook saying that he secured some masks, PPE for nurses around the country. We've seen other brands doing things outside of that.

And I want to bring on an expert in tracking this, Ian Wishingrad, friend of the show and BigEyedWish founder and host, I should say, of Adweek's I'm With the Brand. Ian, when we look at this, it's unclear if consumers are actually caring about it. So what are you seeing in the way that consumers are watching all this play out as companies step up to get a part?

IAN WISHINGRAD: Well, it's changing every day. I mean, as we said, everything is kind of a moving object. So I think initially the first thing everyone did when they didn't understand that there was liquidity from a money standpoint to stop spending. If you can't get into stores where vast majority of commerce takes place, you don't need to be running ads.

People have fallen down the Maslow's needs chart down to safety. They're not thinking about exactly what bathroom tissue-- what exact brand they're getting. They're just going in, getting the essentials, shelf stable items. So it's naturally to freeze your spending-- a sign that's happening.

On top of it, so much of it coincides with television, which is sports-- sports and news. And sports is gone. And so that's a huge-- and all live opportunities are gone. So I don't know how-- I think this is when all the fine print comes out when people figure out who owes what money because there's a lot of money sitting out there right now.

And then you have to find from a brand standpoint as you wade your way into the social networks and you try to make content that is relevant to the situation. You have to be extremely delicate about how you phrase things, because you do not want to look like you're taking too much advantage of the situation. But there's also not a reason to not go in.

ZACK GUZMAN: Yeah, no, I mean, we've been looking at that too when we think about the slowdown. We heard from Facebook saying that they've seen an impact in terms of ad revenue through all of this as smaller businesses. I would imagine restaurants, as well, pull back on ad spend. I'd assume the same thing's playing out with Google parent Alphabet as well.

But travel is a big piece of this as well. I think it was about 30% when we look at the amount of online ad traffic that comes from the travel industry according to an analyst report not too long ago. So, I mean, that's also weighing here.

How do you make that up, though, because when we look forward and the V-shape recovery that people keep talking about, it's not as if maybe if you spend less money now to get people into your restaurant, you're going to spend three times as much down the road, are you?

IAN WISHINGRAD: No. You can't-- you can't redo that kneel. And people aren't going to double down. And on top of that, I think you can talk about the V all you want. Sure, people are dying to get back out there. But I think these things have a very lingering effect.

People's minds-- it's a very-- it's a very tragic sudden thing. And we don't just go unsnap back to normal life in any sense. So I think this is going to have, unfortunately, a real haze over the-- over our industry for quite some time.

ZACK GUZMAN: But when you talk about, I guess, panic buying, you use the example of people going out and not caring exactly what toilet paper they're getting as long as they have it. That's really all that matters at the end of the day. If that's the case right now, is there anything that a brand should be thinking about in terms of how they're planning around this?

IAN WISHINGRAD: Yeah, we are war-rooming right now for our clients and our own brand right now trying to figure out what's the playbook, because at first, you want to be a business owner, which means stop spending for a moment and figure out what's going on. Then you want to find the right way to dip your toe in.

So what's going on at the moment is we're trying to find ways to-- there's a good way to contribute. Like, there's a lot of people are literally donating. I mean, that's a nice way to kind of share and try to help out. If you just saw this morning, Dyson Vacuum, which is no-- like a good genius move.

They've already created a ventilator and are going to create 15,000 of them. So certain brands are actually really set up to take advantage of the situation. Other ones, not so much. And so you just have to find a way to be really cognizant of what's going on and how you behave in that situation.

ZACK GUZMAN: Yeah, and, I mean, it's not just them. We've seen even Pornhub stepping up and donating about 50,000 equipment in terms of masks and gowns, as well-- wouldn't think that they'd have any way to get that material, but they did. They've been doing that.

Even Dyson, Apple. We've seen a lot of brands step up. And people who are not traditionally even clued into supply chains that have anything to do with medical equipment.

IAN WISHINGRAD: Yeah, it's a really opportunity-- when they always talk about brands, there's a whole emotional component to them. And I think everyone's a little nervous about how to behave here. But ultimately, you should default to what is the most human thing you could possibly do, because it's a real opportunity for humanity to kind of help one another.

And so this is a vehicle, your brand, your purpose, whatever it is-- anything you could do to say you contributed and help in some way. Even if you have a food product, for instance, there's nothing wrong with advertising your food product that's shelf stable because people are in the market for that. But it is for people in the travel industry, for instance. It is really-- I think you sit on your hands at the moment.

ZACK GUZMAN: Yeah, and that's basically what we're seeing play out if you believe the updates from Facebook. But for now, Ian Wishingrad, thank you so much for joining us on that-- appreciate it, Man.

IAN WISHINGRAD: Thank you.

ZACK GUZMAN: Also, I guess it's a good point to remind you that our parent company is also doing its part. Verizon is sponsoring a solo Dave Matthews show performed live from his home tonight at 8:00 PM Eastern time.

Payitforward Live will be available for streaming in a new weekly series to help support small businesses suffering from lost business due to the coronavirus pandemic. Matthew's 30-minute kickoff show for the web series will be broadcast live via Verizon's Twitter account tonight and also on the Yahoo.com home page.