I just finished reading “Running with Purpose”, the turnaround story of Brooks Running, in a book club I’m a part of. It was a decent book, but the leading insight of their pandemic response was worth the read.
All of Brooks’ retail partners closed when the pandemic lockdown happened. When Brooks asked for guidance for how to respond, the Vice Chairman of Berkshire Hathaway (Brook’s owner) told them to ‘Follow your customer’. I love that phrase.
Brooks followed their customer to develop alternative data sets to anticipate demand and inform production for their shoes. They started monitoring Strava activity and even placed employees in parks to record the number of people out running. This data showed them that running activity was up, even if sales were currently down. In turn, they needed to anticipate a surge in demand for more shoes.
Follow your customer is a great mantra for product, positioning, and definitely data.
Revisiting the pandemic, we have seen following the customer in action.
In the early days of the pandemic, we knew there wasn’t enough testing capacity so it was about “flattening the curve” in order to protect the customer of the healthcare system.
Then with more robust testing, and a desire to understand spread, the focus became on # cases and % positivity rate
As vaccines became available it became about efficacy of vaccines and % of population that we getting vaccines
Then “breakthrough” infections and declining efficacy became a new topic to understand
Once it was understood that vaccinated people could still get infected, but it was less severe, the leading metric to track shifted to hospitalizations
Now, with at-home tests depressing the visibility of positive cases, we are seeing wastewater analytics become the way to track infection spread
Follow your customer’s journey for insights and informed action.