Visual brand communication during the COVID-19 pandemic

COVID-19 has brought a number of changes in people’s lifestyles as well as in business strategies. The consumers are moving towards social media and brands are forced to adjust their positioning strategies to retain existing and attract new customers. In generating the customer engagement, the brand content must match the visual preferences of its target group. This paper reviews a relevant literature of visual communication in the context of branding focusing on changes in terms of redesign and rebranding imposed by a crisis. The aim is to identify how companies successfully developed memorable, contextually-relevant and public-educational visual brand communication and strategies during the COVID-19 pandemic. The content analysis method was used in order to create a synthesized overview of brands' visual communication and their creative solutions during the pandemic. The results of this study highlight the importance of visual communication that can be taken by brands in dealing with crisis situations such as pandemic, and its effects on consumer behaviour in the new-normal era.