The Manufacturer Newsletter 2022

Digital Marketing
and the Impact due to COVID-19
Founded in 2013, Createm Designs is an ambitious Graphic Design Company with the goal of providing
the same services as an advertising agency, but at a fraction of the cost. Createm has seen steady growth
since its inception, and continues to provide cost-effective, quality service to each of their valued clients.
The year 2020, for Createm, was set to be one full of promise, but as all other businesses around the world
would also come to realise, it was merely the start of a series of challenging years, both economically and
socially, as the COVID-19 pandemic took center stage. However, from these challenges, many valuable
lessons were learned, and Createm was able to adapt to the changing environment by embracing new
opportunities and new ways of doing business.
Before the onset of COVID-19, social media was already firmly on the upswing in terms of the business
side of things worldwide; but in Trinidad and Tobago, the adoption of this business aspect of the platform
still had not gained traction for most companies, which continued with what worked traditionally –
especially with regard to advertising. The falling price of crude oil and the country’s dwindling natural
gas resources did not help instil an abundance of confidence in trying something new. In fact, it would
have taken some significant development to change this mindset. Enter the pandemic.
With the very “social” nature of the virus, the world was soon introduced to the new norm of “social
distancing”, and for companies across the world, this was a game changer. In T&T, a visible shift towards
the use of social media was evident. Was this because of the pandemic? A case could be argued for both
yes and no. However, what is in fact undeniable is that the pandemic definitely opened our eyes to the
impact that social media could have for business and the relevance of electronic commerce.
For example, some of the key takeaways from January 2022 global overview are: More than half of the
world now uses social media (58.4%) 4.62 billion people around the world now use social media, 424
million new users have come online within the last 12 months.
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