We get locked down, but we get up again.

TAP CXM during lockdown: we get locked down, but we get up again.

We have not done one of these for a while. But now that we are 8 weeks deep into lockdown and we have got through the stage of eating everything and anything in the house; we have sorted our lives out and adapted sufficiently enough to get these posts going again.

I was going to write about what we have been up to and how we have been helping our clients build better customer experiences during this period, along with my personal experience during lockdown. I had every intention of making it interesting and entertaining enough that you might carry on reading and, who knows, maybe even give it a like or a share.

But you’ve heard it all already… we’ve adapted to fully remote working; introduced daily calls; virtual coffee breaks; there have been lots of quizzes (Professor Quiz Whitty has to be the best quiz team name); virtual poker nights (the hangovers are not virtual); dodgy haircuts; dodgier virtual backgrounds on calls; furlough or not to furlough (we have been fortunate enough to be able to choose not to); training; upskilling; create a movie scene challenge; Strava activities and again, fortunately, some actual work. And lots of GIFs. And memes.

I had planned to write about all of this with the aim of raising some awareness about TAP CXM and to provide something to share on LinkedIn in the process. This is so that you will know that we are still open for business, that we are nice people (like you) and that we are really good at what we do. But you don’t want to read that, do you? You’ve probably picked up your phone for the 67^th time today and refreshed the same 3 or 4 apps that you always do; searching for that new notification or new update to release a sweet, sweet hit of dopamine to see you through the next 5 minutes.

So I decided to start again. In this ‘new normal’ we have all been merging the personal with the professional and this got me thinking. I thought about how I might be able to make this post interesting enough to actually read. Then I saw this tweet:

What if I tell the story of the lockdown by curating a list of memes/tweets instead? Surely that would be more interesting than reading about how I am grateful to have been able to spend loads more time with my wife and 11 month old son, Ethan (thank God he is not of school going age – hats off to the parents juggling work and home schooling), eating everything, drinking more, running, meditating, baking, reading etc. to get through lockdown and how we’ve been working across lots of cool marketing, data, analytics and transformation projects across clients in different industries around the world. Surely?! So that is what I have done.

Here is some of the story of lockdown as told through the glorious medium of memes:

Before lockdown 

Many of us were obsessively checking corona-related news/data (*refreshes worldometer site again to check the latest stats*)…

Some felt the UK government were a bit slow on the uptake compared with our friends in Europe. Whilst they were going into lockdown we were singing happy birthday twice…

The start of lockdown

Some of us had to find some new hobbies…

Inexplicable panic buying of toilet roll happened…

And hand sanitizer became an extremely valuable commodity…

The fridge became the new destination of choice…

We reflected on the new way of life…

And we got used to working during a pandemic…

Some of us were missing football and wondering if it really would take a global pandemic to stop Liverpool winning the Premier League…

The middle (?) of lockdown

We’d started to become accustomed to this new way of life…

Whilst our friends across the pond were experiencing the crisis in different ways and influencing viewing choices over here…

People were either trying to become TikTok famous or become the next Mo Farah…

The dodgy haircuts started to appear…

And juggling work and home schooling was starting to take its toll for some…

By now most people had worked out how to change their background on a call…

We’d only go out for essential reasons…

We clapped and we cheered for the carers…

We mulled over the positives, consequences and options…

Now-ish of lockdown

As lockdown measures begin to ease we will see how people have been using their time…

And we will get used to the new social rules…

Who knows what the next set of memes will bring as things continue? If my family and friends WhatsApp groups are anything to go by, then I am sure the quality of content is only going to get progressively worse. Let’s hope they find a vaccine pronto.

I hope that this post has been more interesting than the first draft. You will obviously never know, so you will just have to take my word for it. Seriously though, we are really good with organising data, generating insights, building campaigns and optimising customer experiences. Plus we cost less than other larger consultancies too. So if you are fortunate enough to have some budget to improve your customer experience, then I’d love to have a chat to see if we can help. I would also love to see your dodgy haircut and/or dodgy virtual [enter conference facility of choice here] background.

I promise that we will write some more posts that contain some (hopefully) useful information about some things that we are working on amongst other things. So, watch this space.

To contact James, drop him an e-mail here.