Is your brand zombie proof?

Creative team members Alyn Wambeke and Jennifer Lau contributed to this post. 

Editor’s Note: Contributing authors wrote this post in the Halloween spirit. Content is meant to bring a humorous, lighthearted approach to branding and marketing.

With the explosion of biogenetic engineering, barnyard influenzas, and endless hours of reality television, “experts” agree the threat of a zombie apocalypse has never been more imminent.

That’s the bad news.

The good news is that you’ll never have to face challenging market shifts alone. As brand experts, we know how to help you explore this new business landscape, ensuring success in the moldering marketplace to come.

(Image Source: Flickr)

From consumed to consumer.

In a post-apocalyptic world, surviving consumers will focus on acquiring basic day-to-day necessities (in addition to heavy, blunt objects.) Extended protection plans and long-term financing will become less relevant than competitive prices as consumers focus on short-term value and reasonably priced items like soap, bullets, and ramen noodles.

The undead aren’t classified as consumers, as their obtrusive brain pillaging doesn’t normally result in monetary exchange. However, their effect on survivors makes a dramatic influence in their purchasing decisions.

A marketing campaign geared toward a post-apocalyptic target audience should be sensitive to customers’ new world views. Most survivors will suffer significant personal losses and will embrace emphasis on teamwork and compassion, so ensure your tone reflects this. Portraying zombies in a negative light may play well with many consumers, but remember that the reanimated corpse chained up in the garage is still someone’s Aunt Gladys.

Good business is your best defense…besides a shotgun.

Carnivorous cadavers are aggravating, but diminished competition and the lack of choice in goods and services are equally frustrating to your customer base. Marketing will be most effective when it focuses on reliability, price point, value, and being part of the big-picture community solution.

For many retailers, cross-promotional campaigns will be key to expanding your customer relationships. Baseball bats and shovels are simple items to meet survivors’ security needs. Consider offering zombie-beheading lessons along with other educational sessions to bring people into your fortified brick-and-mortar locations.

Embrace social.

Just as consumers embrace Facebook and Twitter today, survival blogs and tweets will continue to engage them in conversation. Anti-zombie action leagues, support groups, and zombie traffic reports will be popular among social media threads, as well as community garden information and zombie vaccine breakthroughs. Helping people connect with local living-and-breathing communities will create an underlying emotional response to your brand, strengthening your market foothold.

The key to surviving a zombie invasion will be – as it has always been – communicating relationship and value. A little planning will make this whole undead-ruling-the-earth thing seem like a minor bump in the road for your brand.