Spend any time with someone in marketing and you’ll hear a familiar theme. Everything changed with Covid. 

Which is not too surprising considering how much the world changed in the past 18 months or so. If you were in the restaurant business or much of the retail world, things came crashing down pretty fast.  

It’s different for us in the chiropractic profession. Our customers must see us in person. They’re often in pain, or at least discomfort, and they need help.  

That doesn’t mean we’re doing things exactly the way we did before Covid, but it’s different than your local mall shop. 

Here’s the good news if you follow SIDECAR: We were ready for a pandemic and we didn’t even know it. 

That’s the lesson we took away from this article on FastCompany.com, a business site focused on innovation, technology and design. [https://www.fastcompany.com/90693485/covid-killed-marketing-long-live-the-experience-economy] 

The article, “COVID killed marketing. Long live the experience economy,” is written by Duncan Wardle, the former Head of Innovation & Creativity at Disney.  

Wardle writes that the pandemic upended traditional marketing. “…but the ‘experience economy’ is taking its place to reengineer our relationships with customers and engage more deeply than ever before.” 

As you may know, we’re devotees of the Experience Economy concept, as conceived by Joe Pine and Jim Gilmore. The article fits nicely with what we teach at SIDECAR. It’s all laid out in our book, “Chrome.” We believe that the patient experience – and all the details that go into it – is what builds your brand, not a bunch of money spent on advertising.  

Now, there’s a place for focused marketing. We think about it as throwing gas on the fire of what you’ve already created. You can learn more about what SIDECAR can do for your marketing plan here. The upshot is that we can make your life a lot easier and improve your bottom line.  

But back to the post-pandemic world as envisioned by Duncan Wardle. Here’s a great passage.  

Think about what we worked so hard to virtually recreate during lockdowns: Family dinners. Concerts. Cooking classes. We didn’t spend our time in isolation dreaming about a trip to the mall. We spent it dreaming about shared experiences. 

So true.  

Learn more about how the business of your practice can meld into the reality of today’s marketplace.  

Spoiler alert: it can.