COVID rates are plummeting, vaccines are working, and the country is finally starting to re-open its economy to pre-pandemic standards. Americans have spent more than a year cooped up in their homes and they are dying to make up for lost time and experiences. The market is anticipating an explosion of travel and leisure activities this summer. Consumers are ready to return to gyms, concerts, live music, restaurants, museums, movie theaters, and other leisure activities that were closed or restricted during COVID. And those experiences need accessories. Luggage, outfits, makeup, sneakers, etc. We're tired of sweats, hoodies, and takeout. People are ready to clean up and crawl out of the gutter. They want to bring joy back in their lives, and they are willing to pay for it.

You should be prepared for some of the busiest quarters of consumer spending on record, and part of that preparation involves refreshing and updating your marketing assets. Your content before COVID is now dated. The world has changed and it ain’t going back. Don't be old and dated. Now is the time to prioritize new, exciting offerings that you have:

1. Covid safety protocols were all the rage when people were scared and needed reassurance before venturing out of their homes. But that should now be scrapped in favor of promotional content (photos and videos) that feature maskless patrons and employees. After a year of masks, distancing, and rabid hand-washing, no one wants to revisit the most miserable year we’ve had in decades. Certain places such as museums (The Peterson Auto Museum in L.A pictured below) and movie theaters are best enjoyed as part of a collective experience. They're not meant to be empty.

2. Make your customers eager to part with their cash - new, updated content should be exciting and high quality. Make your customers clamor for reservations, bookings, and tickets. Dated photos and videos will quickly get overlooked in favor of new and more relevant content. This is the time to scream from the rooftop of every platform that you’re “open and ready for business.” Content should be light-hearted, encouraging, and offer a dash of escapism. If you're a brand that sells luggage, for example, video and photos showing your product "anywhere but home" might be something to consider. Photos would work as well featuring Instagram's carousel feature.

3. Target what your customers missed during the pandemic - socializing with friends and family, meeting new people, and trying new things have all been halted. Now is the time to inject that surge of nostalgia into your marketing materials. Courtship is back too! Remember those butterflies before a first date? Remind your audience as well. If you sell clothes, tell them it's time to ditch the sweats. It really won't take much to get your customers out of the house. But they will have a ton of options. You want them thinking fondly of you.

Be sure to reach out to a digital media specialist who knows how to capture your business’s ambiance, feel, and messaging effectively while upholding a high standard of aesthetic quality. This is not the time to hire your nephew with his new DSLR or the guy on Craigslist offering photos for a hundred bucks. Your investment should cover more than photos or videos. They should be dynamic, immersive assets that tell the right story for your audience.

Pretty pictures are a dime a dozen these days, and while your brand still needs highly polished content, you want a photographer or filmmaker who understands that even the most beautiful images will ring hollow without the right context. What do you want your audience to think, feel and do? What platforms do your customers hang out on and what are the rules to generate the most optimized results for those networks? You want someone who is going to put in the time to ask these questions so that you’re not just throwing money at a problem because “you know you need content and that’s what your competitors are doing.”