Launching a new brand in lockdown: crazy?
You had the brilliant idea
About 200,000 new businesses start-up every year in the UK, and a significant number of this year’s batch have been hastily re-working their plans as a result of the pandemic and lockdown. So what DO you do now? Bullish leaders talk about investing, innovating and pivoting. But as a start-up you’ve probably got one shot at this, and you don’t want to blow it.
That’s certainly what was going through the mind of Douglas Morton, Founder and CEO of Bother, a new home shopping service that claims to save us time and money, whilst being kinder to the planet.
Douglas’ new e-commerce venture was about a month away from launch when we all went into lockdown. “I was really conflicted about what to do,” he explained. “Supermarket shelves were emptying, people were panic buying, online supermarket services had stopped accepting new customers, and the few available delivery slots on others were booked up a month in advance. On the one hand I desperately wanted to help out and allow consumers access to our home delivery service, but I didn’t want people to think we were cashing in on the crisis.” Bother focuses on non-perishable and bulky products like washing powder and toilet rolls, but it includes non-perishable food items too.
“I gathered the extended team including our agency partners and we all agreed that as long as we were authentic in our approach, the right thing to do now would be to launch.“
Douglas worked closely with his creative agency, Wax/On, to quickly change Bother’s communications to ensure they had the right tone for a lockdown launch. But he was worried that with so many people still struggling to do basic shopping, Bother might not be able to meet consumer demand.
“We came up with the idea of offering the Beta service to NHS workers, which was a genuine attempt to give help where it was most deserved and needed, whilst limiting our reach to ensure we gave our first customers the best service we could, which seemed to work. The feedback we’ve had was amazing and I’m so pleased we took the risk and decided to launch in the middle of a crisis. I’ve learned so much.”
Wax/On’s Creative’s Partner, Ben Hooper said: “I really felt for Douglas. It was easy for me to say ‘Go on, launch – do it with feeling and you won’t get another chance like this’ but I didn’t have his responsibility for getting all the logistics right which really hadn’t been fully tested. I hope we did our bit by proactively recommending better – more culturally relevant - ways to frame the Bother proposition.”
And what have they both learned from launching a new brand in a crisis?
“I certainly learned that in times of heightened emotions like this you can’t please everyone, “ said Ben. “Despite our best and well-intentioned efforts to focus on a community who deserved our help, we still attracted some social criticism and were accused of ripping off NHS workers. But we stayed consistent to our Purpose and I think we managed it fairly. Some of the advertising messaging we had ready pre-launch included light-hearted executions around ‘never running out’ which was obviously completely inappropriate in the early stages of lockdown. We shifted to a more matter of fact tone which worked well.”
Douglas adds, “Launching a start-up is usually an incredibly emotionally intense experience, heightened by working in close proximity with your colleagues. Of course we’ve been denied that for three months, so I’m concerned we’ve missed out on the camaraderie. I’ve done my best to keep in touch with everyone, and we’ve still not had that launch party of course! I saw the extended team every day on Zoom and then everybody went away and just got stuff done. It was efficient and I’m so proud of what we achieved.“
Bother has now rolled out its service across the UK including Northern Ireland.