Executive Briefing
Covid-19 is accelerating a new chapter for commerce and experience
Everyone is improvising every day right now. And some of it is pretty creative.
By Dan Frommer on Saturday, March 14, 2020 at 11:00 am
What a truly weird, anxiety-filled couple of weeks since my last post about the Covid-19 coronavirus and its potential impact on business, the consumer, and society.
The next couple of months are going to be wild: An accelerated reimagination of many forms of commerce, media, and interaction.
It is sad (and extra stressful) that a global pandemic — which has already killed thousands of people, and is not nearly contained — is the catalyst of this change.
But because of things like prohibitions on large public gatherings, suspension of professional sports, postponement of travel, retail closures, and any recession that follows, this has the power to be a generational inflection point for many concepts, businesses, and industries — for better or worse.
Many of the what-ifs that seemed out there a couple of weeks ago — “Will baseball teams play this summer to empty stadiums?” — now seem falsely optimistic. In the US, the NBA and MLB seasons are on hold, Hollywood film launches have been postponed, travel bans put in place, etc.
Everyone is improvising every day right now. And some of it is pretty creative.
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