After the coronavirus pandemic forced issuers to adapt rewards, enhance forbearance, and build out digital tools to cope with a volume hit in 2020, they’re looking to reimagine their offerings in the future to add new customers and regain primary card status.

Tangled policy messaging bred mistrust among users

As normalcy returns, Alaska Airlines pivoted its marketing strategy from heartfelt imagery to messaging with a fresher tone. By embracing humor and levity, the airline is reassuring consumers that it’s OK to start thinking about travel again. Watch Industry Voices Spotlight on Travel with Alaska Airlines managing director of marketing and advertising Natalie Bowman.

As Dickies nears its 100th birthday, Kathy Hines, vice president of global marketing, speaks about the importance of taking a deep introspective look at your brand. She discusses how Dickies went to market with its “United by Inspiration, United by Dickies" campaign and honest, authentic global messaging with a localized approach. As a business leader, Kathy also offers advice to women as we continue celebrating Women’s History Month with Industry Voices.

Our new forecast for global mobile messaging app users shows that the pandemic has accelerated adoption of OTT messaging services, though not in every country nor to the same degree for every app.

Consumers in Europe increasingly see brands in a much broader context. The public is becoming more alert to the ways companies and brands go beyond advertising and marketing to make other positive contributions—or not. The converse also applies: Brands that don’t step up to the plate, or are linked with counterproductive actions, can easily lose consumer approval.

Pandemic-related stay-at-home mandates have accelerated OTT messaging app adoption in most parts of the world. In the US, however, alternative means of communicating, including Zoom and FaceTime, have hindered usage of OTT messaging services.

For context, this figure was only 20 minutes in 2015, so messaging users are spending much more time in these apps. Analyst Take. The pandemic gains for mobile messaging have been slightly less sticky than for other activities.

Instant messaging was the most popular app category among females in China who used mobile internet every month, followed by retail, video-on-demand (VOD), short-form video, maps and navigation, and payment, per January 2021 data from research firm QuestMobile. Banking apps ranked 10th, used by more than 40% of such users.

We surveyed employees and customers and did an audit of all our competitors and their top-level messaging. We used a word cloud and frequency counter of the terms used most in the market to understand the white space we could fill and what words were most competitive in brand messaging. We did it all internally.