2020 marked our first full calendar year in business and, to misquote Charles Dickens, it was the best time to start publishing and simultaneously, it was the absolute worst time. By all critical metrics, we finished the year well and there is a LOT on the drawing board for 2021 but I think the biggest takeaways from 2020 have less to do with KPIs and more to do with values and distilling the important from the unimportant. And from the looks of our list of last year’s top reads, that notion seems to have resonated with our readers as well.
So, rather than stick our tongues out at a year that challenged all of us, I propose a few moments of reflection to think about what we lost and what we gained, and maybe more importantly, what those hard-fought lessons will mean to us this coming year. Here then are our top customer engagement reads to get you started.
#1 Survey: The First Thing People Are Going To Do After Quarantine
We partnered with Suzy and Brand Keys for a series of surveys to take the pulse of American consumers as they (we) dealt with the seismic changes brought on by Covid 19. This particular article summarizes our findings from the fifth survey in the series and ended up capturing the zeitgeist of what we were all thinking, feeling and doing about it at the moment. For reference, here are links to the other surveys in the series. 
- SURVEY: How Coronavirus is Changing the American Lifestyle
- COVID 19 Lifestyle Tracker: We’re Having More Sex
- COVID-19 Lifestyle Tracker: Toilet Paper & Movies
- Covid-19 Consumer Behavior Reaches Saturation Levels 60 Days In
- The COVID-19 Lifestyle Changes Survey – What We’ve Learned So Far
- Survey: The First Thing People Are Going To Do After Quarantine
- The Coronavirus Anticipation Index – July, 2020
- Coronavirus Anticipation Index V.2 – August, 2020
#2 Branding in the Coronavirus Age of Scarcity: 5 Predictions that Will Change Marketing
Elissa Moses penned a piece for TheCustomer back in June that caught the attention of a lot of people in our space asking the question: What happens when its increasingly difficult (or inconvenient) to get your favorite item, as now with the sudden market situation due to Coronavirus? Author: Elissa Moses of Brain Group Global.
#3 Consumer Psychology in the Time of COVID-19
This study suggests that some of the strongest indicators of consumer behavior in the COVID-19 environment are driven by consumer psychology rather than a specific consumer demographic. Author: Tim Lawton, co-founder of SightX.
#4 Brand Loyalty Drivers are Growing, More Complex
Brand loyalty is growing – not shrinking. But brand loyalty drivers are also becoming more complex and harder to sustain. Author: Robert Passikoff, CEO of Brand Keys.
#5 The Customer Data Tail is About to Wag the Dog
Customer Data Privacy is just the tip of the spear. Consumers have higher expectations than most marketers are prepared to acknowledge or deal with – and catching up to those expectations is going to require nothing short of a sea change in AdTech. Author: Mike Giambattista
Top Report – The CxO Report: The Road to Customerization
C-Level Leaders on Navigating the New Customer Landscape – we asked a series of questions to C-level leaders about what they see, what they face, and how they are dealing with the changes in the customer landscape.
Top Video – TheCustomer News, Episode 1
Rafer Weigel is a veteran of the broadcast news world so when he approached TheCustomer about co-producing a news magazine focused on the fast-changing world of customer engagement, we jumped at the chance.
