Tough times are ahead, but brands shouldn’t waste a good crisis

Wherever you turn, everything seems doom and gloom right now. From the war in Ukraine high energy prices, to disrupted supply chains and dramatic weather driven by climate change. Among all this, there are still reasons to be positive. Winston Churchill said never to waste a good crisis: advice worth thinking about over the coming winter.

There will be a lot of brands out there who are looking at the next six months more in hope than in expectation. Others, though, will be on the lookout for the new opportunities that crop up in times of adversity.

Founders and CEOs have to strike a delicate balancing act. The priority is to keep driving forward the business, supporting your team, and delivering your products and services. You also need to stick to the values and ways of working that made you who you are. The second part might sound more like a slogan than good business sense, but in fact it’s crucial to long-term success.

As customers and consumers, we choose brands that reflect our values. If a brand ditches those values when the going gets tough, that sends a message. Again, it’s a balancing act – stay in the black in the short term, while ensuring you retain the trust and backing of your customers. However, a stiff challenge like that is really a catalyst for positive change.

At Dash we’ve seen this time as an opportunity to double down on what our team and consumers believe is most important for the business – including recently donating 90,000 meals to the food waste charity The Felix Project, and becoming carbon neutral. These projects take a significant amount of resource, but we believe it’s the right way to run our business.

Being in the pressure cooker can make you enjoy the positives that bit more, as well. After several years of our UK and Australian teams not being able to meet each other in person due to Covid-19 restrictions, we were all finally able to get together last month for our annual summer party. The weather might have turned since then, but the memories will remain for a long time.

Many of us surprised ourselves with our resilience during Covid, both personally and professionally. Businesses open today have come through one of the greatest challenges of our lives – a global pandemic. That alone should be grounds for optimism – we are all that bit tougher than we think.