This Proves it — The Pandemic Is A Startup Accelerant
New integrated communications agency Sēd launches with “Next Startup Wave” study and intends to help startups, born from the pandemic, achieve hypergrowth, fast.
While firmly established companies and brands struggled to find their footing through the chaos of the pandemic, Sēd Communications Founder, Loretta Markevics, saw an opportunity to, as she says, “turn quaranlemons into quarantade,” and to support those who were doing the same. As a marketing strategist and futurist, she predicted early on in the pandemic that the uncontrollable nature of it would inspire people to bet on themselves and start their own companies. Twenty cities in a cross-country “startup city” tour and one hypothesis-validating study later, Markevics has announced the launch of her new agency, Sēd, and her plan to focus on generating hypergrowth for startups in the wellness, cannabis, and technology sectors.
You predicted that in a challenging time, innovators could actually be less risk-averse than usual. How has your past experience informed your prediction?
In my career, I have worked at large advertising, PR and marketing firms creating strategies and campaigns for big iconic brands, launched and relaunched innovations from those brands, and supported the launch of many startup companies.
When Covid hit, many big brands struggled to be nimble and respond to the times through the lens of opportunity, while brands like Instacart, Houseparty, and Mirror moved quickly to help people get on with living. I was counseling some big brands when the pandemic hit, and they were more concerned about keeping their business alive in its current form rather than rethinking that approach and pivoting. Maybe because the second they pivoted, they could unravel the foundational conventions they helped to create. Startups are naturally iterative. They continue to evolve as they develop, whereas evolution among legacy brands does not happen that often. Startup brands’ biggest desire is to change the status quo, so being that the status quo blew up eight months ago, that is the perfect context in which startups or a startup mentality will thrive.
Tell us about your cross-country tour. Where have you gone, what are you observing and hoping to learn?
I have basically built and launched my agency from the front seat of a car, and it has been wild. I’ve grown such a deep appreciation for our country during this (so far five months!) road trip. Its diversity, beauty, weirdness, and humanity. I’ve traveled the world and have been more in awe of the beauty I’ve seen on this trip than anywhere I’ve ever been. I’ve also sat in the back room of focus group facilities of almost every major city in the country for years early in my career. Still, I have learned more about the character of people from different cities on this trip than I have talking to thousands of consumers behind the two-way glass. The reason is that I immersed in the city. Because I can work remotely, it was the first time that I had the luxury of living in a city for a while, rather than just stopping by. We visited many cities but spent the most time in New York, Miami, Austin, New Orleans, Santa Fe, Palm Springs, San Diego, and soon, LA. As a life-long New Yorker, I’ve learned that I am so very east coast-centric. I am uneasy with quiet, and I have no idea how to take things slowly.
People around this country are friendly, opinionated, they will listen, they’re respectful and helpful. Now we are in a pandemic, so people were a bit on-edge everywhere. We saw our fair share of no mask wearing, non-socially distant pool parties and suffered our share of dirty looks when we wouldn’t ride in an elevator with someone but overall, people were trying to make the best of it. What I noticed is the resilience of people and the desire to find the laugh or the smile, even when it eludes us the most. Finding opportunity for the good to come from the bad. Businesses were honest about their struggle, but upbeat and hopeful. Even optimistic. One of the goals of the tour was also an audit of the cannabis footprint across the country, which I will be writing about soon, and the owners of those businesses were more optimistic than most. The majority of the cities we visited were on the list of “best startup cities” and that is where this feeling of positivity was amplified. I wanted to live in startup cities to understand the energy surrounding these startup founders and live in their shoes. I will say that everything I described above was amplified in these startup cities, even in the face of the pandemic. There was an energy of belief and a sense that the city was ready to burst. Like people were working away just waiting to explode out of the gates once they could. I saw people working away in cafes, having meetings, keeping the energy alive and hungry to begin.
Your study is pretty interesting. What are the biggest takeaways there?
The biggest takeaway is that people are invigorated by the uncertainty of the future and by the pandemic. In fact, outside of the obvious, “making money,” and “being my own boss,” some of the other drivers for why people are starting their own business now were, “I’ve learned life is too short,” “Working from home has shown me I can be productive in ways I haven’t thought about before.” It also makes sense that the most active groups in starting their own businesses were Gen Z (21–24) and Black Americans. In particular, these two audiences are dealing with a crisis of understanding — — that is, people understanding them. Marketers especially. With more time on their hands to dream and create when the future is uncertain, I am not surprised that these would be the two groups that say to themselves, “If no brands are solving for what I want solved for and don’t actually understand me or how to talk to me and others like me, that I will just create the solution myself.” I think we will see a lot of institutional, behavioral, and ritual restructuring in our society as a result of these groups becoming more active, and the startup industry should be ready for them.
Why now?
I’m sure you’ve read this as often as I have during this pandemic, that out of struggle comes greatness. Some of the most incredible startups like Uber, Airbnb, Groupon, and Square all launched during and after the recession hit. The US Census put out a statistic one day before we shared our study results that business applications for the third quarter of 2020 were 1,566,373, an increase of 77.4 percent compared to the second quarter of 2020. People are unafraid and taking control of their destiny in an uncertain world. Just like the people I met on the road, they are staring this pandemic in the face and instead of being a victim, they are creating their own futures to not only survive it but to thrive as a result of it.
How did you identify your agency’s focus areas?
Unless you’ve been living under a rock, you’ve seen the explosion of the cannabis industry, whether a local CBD store popped up in your town or, as I recently saw in Telluride, a dispensary sits comfortably across the street from a police station. My team has significant experience marketing in regulated categories like beverage alcohol, pharmaceuticals, medical devices and treatments, tobacco, and experience in cannabis. Cannabis is the next frontier in regulated categories, and I find that exciting. The cannabis market is projected to grow 25% in the next six years (Grandview Research), which may even be a conservative estimate.
Wellness has become a dominant lifestyle choice, and one that shows no signs of slowing down. We’ve seen wellness options sneak its way into every single category, even exploding the non-alcoholic beverage segment, so anything is possible there. That’s why the health vertical has a virtually permanent spot near the top of the percentage of new startups.
And tech has become a necessity in our lives, and that place is now further solidified with the fast adoption of video conferencing and digital creation platforms. Technology and modern life cannot be pulled apart. The startup world is learning how to harness the full potential of AI to its advantage in inventing, and that is very exciting.
What I find is so interesting is the overlap between the three categories as well. The startup brands I have recent or past experience with either fall in one of these categories or across at least two of the three.
Who is your ideal client?
A startup that desires a partnership with an agency that thrives on challenge — the challenge put in front of us to solve and the challenge issued to the category in which they want to compete. We want clients who desire more than disruption; they want eruption, meaning they want to reorder the leadership in a category completely. It takes inventiveness, boldness, and bravery, and we are all stocked up on these three ingredients at Sēd.
What’s your biggest piece of free advice to startups?
Give equal importance to your branding and naming as you do getting your name on the lips of consumers. All too often, I hear startups say, well, “we don’t have that much money to launch our brand because we spent so much on packaging, logo design, etc. so can you just do some PR to get it out there.” Branding and design are critical to your success, yes, but please be sure you save some resources to properly showcase all of the beautiful work you’ve done developing your branding to the world.
Also, having a brand positioning is not the same as having a brand narrative. The brand narrative is the story you are telling from your positioning that will resonate when you are telling it. Brand narratives use culture as a backdrop — that is why your launch’s timing and what you are saying need to be in lock-step. When either is out of synch with the other, your efforts may not net the hypergrowth you desire.
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