Sept. 11. The new challenges.

• Author: Hall, Robert
• Position: Marketing Solutions - Marketing for financial services industry - Brief Article

Truly defining events are rare. For Americans, there's Pearl Harbor--maybe Vietnam or the oil shortage. Before these events, people tended to think, feel, act, interact and buy one way; afterward, a different way.

Before e-commerce, who imagined that ordinary consumers would demand access all the time to everything under the sun? That customers would freely choose the provider, the delivery channel, the access method, the time and even the price? But once e-commerce happened, new markets quickly formed around that new attitude of "I'll take it now, and I'll take it my way." New companies flourished, old companies floundered or adapted. The pre-e-commerce marketplace is gone forever.

So it is worth considering, in light of September 11, how will people change? How will they regard your products and services differently? What will be the qualities of the companies that thrive in this new environment? What are the new markets that will form, and how ought you to respond?

Nobody knows for sure, but a starting place would be: What is important to people now?

Security: The trademark attitude of pre-attack America was, blessedly, complacency. We were blase about our security because we thought we could be. So b1ase that popular movies were drenched in violence and terror, and TV's survivor shows subjected people "just like us" to manufactured danger and tension.

Overnight, it all changed. Now, security is top-of-mind for everybody.

Community: When has it ever felt more important to be part of a community--to know and be known, to be with and deal with people you trust?

Being known matters. Over the past year or so, well-known retailers were omitting their names from direct-mail envelopes so customers wouldn't automatically toss them. Now, how will consumers greet mail from unknown senders? Not with "maybe I should open this" but "maybe I should call the bio squad."

Value: During the heady days of e-commerce, value meant building your personal pile. The old saw, "If you're so good...