The Energy Crisis: How Brands Can Adapt When Consumer Behaviour Changes

A crisis changes more than household budgets. It can affect where people spend their time, how they travel, what they consider worth buying, and which media channels they rely on. For marketers, this means a plan developed at the beginning of the year may no longer reflect how customers are behaving several months later.

In this episode of Next Monday, host Ibarra Villaseran speaks with Winlove Chavez of Nielsen Philippines, Angela Thakur of Lennon For Good, and Norman Davadilla of Moving Walls Philippines about the ongoing energy crisis and what marketers can learn from previous periods of disruption. Their discussion looks back at COVID-19 as a recent example of how consumers respond to uncertainty, before examining the implications for media consumption, digital adoption, connected TV, out-of-home advertising, brand communication, and marketing investment.

The discussion makes an important distinction: a crisis does not necessarily mean the market has disappeared. More often, people adjust their behaviour to new circumstances. The job of the marketer is to understand those changes and decide whether the existing strategy still makes sense.

Previous Crises Give Marketers a Useful Reference Point

When advertisers began approaching Nielsen about the energy crisis in 2026, many were asking similar questions. They wanted to understand how consumers might respond and what the disruption could mean for operations, production, and marketing budgets. Chavez explains that Nielsen looked back at one of the most significant recent disruptions available for comparison: the COVID-19 lockdowns of 2020.

The circumstances are different, but the earlier crisis provides useful evidence of how people respond when everyday life becomes uncertain. One of the clearest changes was television consumption. Nielsen recorded around 30% growth in TV ratings when comparing 2019 with the second quarter of 2020, with news becoming particularly important as consumers looked for credible information about a situation they were still trying to understand.

Radio experienced a similar shift. Chavez notes that radio reach had previously hovered around 40% to 44%, while AM radio listenership reached as high as 49% during the pandemic. The reason was practical: people wanted hyperlocal information about restrictions and conditions that directly affected their daily lives. Thakur connects this behaviour to a broader psychological need. When people feel unsafe, trust becomes an anchor, and established media can become more important because people need information they believe they can rely on.

The lesson is not that every crisis will produce the same increase in television or radio consumption. Rather, periods of uncertainty can quickly change what consumers consider important, which sources they trust, and where they spend their attention.

Crises Can Accelerate Existing Digital Behaviour

COVID-19 also accelerated behaviours that were already moving online. Consumers adopted food delivery, online grocery shopping, ecommerce, digital banking, and electronic wallets at a much faster pace. Nielsen’s data cited in the discussion showed e-wallet activity growing sevenfold during the second quarter of 2020 compared with 2019, while online grocery shopping doubled.

Some of those behaviours remained even after restrictions eased. Thakur uses banking as a simple example. Many transactions that once required a visit to a branch can now be completed online, making physical visits much less frequent for many customers. A temporary disruption helped accelerate a behaviour that technology had already made possible.

This distinction matters when marketers assess consumer behaviour during a crisis. Some changes are temporary responses to immediate circumstances, while others speed up shifts that were already underway. Understanding the difference can help businesses decide whether a change in strategy is needed for the next few months or for the longer term.

The Market Hasn’t Disappeared. Its Behaviour Has Changed.

Out-of-home advertising provides a useful example of how quickly circumstances can change. During COVID-19, Nielsen saw out-of-home exposure fall by around 50%, while Moving Walls’ mobility data showed similarly sharp declines during the early stages of lockdown. With far fewer people travelling, it was reasonable to question what would happen to the medium.

As restrictions changed, however, mobility began to return. More importantly, Davadilla recalls that advertisers found other ways to reach people while movement remained limited. Instead of relying exclusively on traditional billboard locations, some brands appeared on screens inside condominiums and convenience stores. The audience had not ceased to exist; its movements and routines had changed.

The same principle applies to the energy crisis. Consumers may shorten trips, combine errands, spend more time within their communities, or stay home more often. Marketers therefore need to follow what Davadilla describes as the adjusted consumer rather than assume that previous behaviours will continue unchanged.

Marketing Plans Need to Move With the Consumer

Villaseran points out that crises are rarely static. During COVID-19, restrictions changed from one classification to another, mobility increased and decreased, and consumers continuously adjusted their routines. The current energy crisis may be different in nature, but the need to respond to changing behaviour remains.

A media plan developed before a disruption may therefore become less relevant as the situation progresses. The problem is not necessarily that the original plan was wrong. It was created using the information available at the time. The problem comes when marketers continue following that plan even after the customer has changed.

This makes regular review particularly important during periods of disruption. Rather than asking where customers were when the annual plan was prepared, businesses need to understand where they are now, what they are doing differently, and whether existing media investments still reflect those behaviours.

Cutting Advertising Can Create a Bigger Problem Later

When business conditions become difficult, advertising is often one of the expenses companies consider reducing. Chavez argues that completely halting advertising should not become the automatic response because mental availability remains important when consumers are reconsidering what stays in their household budgets.

Nielsen’s analysis cited during the episode found that pulling advertising from media platforms could contribute to as much as a 2% reduction in revenue, with recovery potentially becoming more costly in subsequent quarters. Chavez therefore recommends returning to marketing mix modelling and ROI studies to determine which media provide the strongest combination of reach, resonance, and efficiency.

The argument is not that brands should continue spending exactly as they did before the crisis. Budgets may need to change, and some channels may become more or less useful as behaviour shifts. The more practical approach is to make those decisions using current information rather than cutting investment simply because conditions have become uncertain.

Household Decision-Makers May Become More Important

A crisis can also change who needs to be included in the target audience. Brands naturally have core customer segments, but during periods of tighter household spending, the person responsible for managing the household budget may have greater influence over what stays in the basket.

Chavez recommends considering these decision-makers as a secondary audience where relevant. Someone may not be the primary user of a product but can still influence whether it continues to be purchased. As households become more selective, brands may therefore need to communicate not only with the consumer but also with the person evaluating whether the product remains worth buying.

This places greater importance on communicating value clearly. Consumers may already know a brand, but difficult economic conditions can cause them to reconsider familiar choices. Marketing can help remind them why the product was chosen in the first place and what makes it worth keeping.

Connected TV Has Become a National Platform

One of the strongest media opportunities discussed in the episode is connected television, or CTV. Chavez cites Nielsen findings showing that roughly seven to eight out of ten ABC1 households have connected television, while Thakur notes adoption of approximately 78% in urban homes and 70% in rural homes based on the data being discussed.

For Thakur, these figures suggest that CTV should no longer be treated simply as an emerging medium. It has become a national platform that marketers need to account for when deciding where audiences are spending their time.

The experience also differs from advertising on a phone or laptop. A mobile device is generally personal, while a television can be watched by several members of a household at once. This means a single advertisement may reach multiple household decision-makers in a shared environment, creating a different context for both media planning and creative development.

Different Screens Need Different Creative Thinking

Marketing teams that have concentrated heavily on mobile may have become accustomed to vertical formats and small-screen experiences. Connected television changes that environment. Audiences are viewing content on larger screens, potentially with other people in the room, and may expect a richer visual experience.

Thakur argues that brands need to account for this rather than simply moving creative designs for mobile onto television. The format, production quality, and way the message is presented may need to change to suit the medium.

This reinforces a broader marketing principle. Media placement and creative execution should not be treated as separate decisions. Understanding where the customer is solves only part of the problem. The communication also needs to make sense in the environment where the customer encounters it.

Out-of-Home Has Become More Measurable

The same shift toward better measurement is happening in out-of-home advertising. Davadilla describes an industry that has moved beyond the traditional idea of placing a billboard in a fixed location without much visibility into the audience passing it. Mobility and audience data can now help advertisers understand where people travel, when they move, and which locations may be more relevant under changing conditions.

This becomes particularly useful during a crisis because trips can become shorter and more purposeful. Consumers may combine several errands into one journey or spend more time within their immediate communities rather than travelling across the city. Advertisers therefore need to ask whether the locations in the original media plan still reflect where their audience actually goes.

Programmatic digital out-of-home adds another layer of flexibility. Davadilla explains that advertisers can use available technology to schedule messages according to audience, time, and location rather than treating every placement as fixed. The wider lesson is that out-of-home decisions can increasingly be based on observed mobility rather than assumptions about where consumers should be.

Consumers Become More Deliberate About Value

Media behaviour is only one part of the change. Purchasing decisions can also become more considered when household budgets are under pressure. Thakur argues that consumers may become more utilitarian, paying greater attention to why one product deserves their money over another.

For brands, this makes the reason to believe more important. Competing only on price is not always necessary. A product that costs more can still make sense if the business clearly explains the quality, durability, efficiency, technical features, or other benefits that justify the difference. During a period when customers are doing more research and thinking harder about purchases, marketing needs to give them enough substance to make that decision.

Not every purchase, however, needs to be purely practical. Thakur also discusses the familiar Filipino idea of “deserve ko ‘to.” During difficult periods, small pleasures such as food delivery, coffee, cosmetics, jewellery, or entertainment can provide moments of enjoyment. The value being offered is different, but the marketing task remains the same: understand what the product does for the customer and communicate that clearly.

Brands Need to Watch Their Tone

Perhaps the clearest communications advice in the episode comes from Thakur, who recommends that brands review the tone they use during a crisis. Filipino consumers are perceptive communicators and can recognise when a business is using fear, anxiety, urgency, or artificial scarcity to push them toward a purchase.

That approach can have consequences beyond the immediate campaign. Consumers may remember not only what a brand said but how the communication made them feel. Thakur’s recommendation is straightforward: brands should help where they can, and when they cannot help directly, they should at least avoid making an already difficult situation worse.

This does not mean every business needs to produce emotional crisis advertising or change its entire brand position. It means communication should acknowledge the environment in which customers are making decisions. A message that would have seemed harmless under normal conditions can appear insensitive when people are under greater financial or psychological pressure.

Trust Matters When People Feel Uncertain

The conversation returns several times to trust and psychological safety. During COVID-19, people relied on sources that helped them understand changing circumstances, and they remembered businesses that appeared to take advantage of uncertainty.

Thakur argues that customers are less likely to want a relationship with a brand that makes them feel unsafe. For marketers, this means short-term tactics designed to create urgency need to be considered against the longer-term relationship the business wants to build with its customers.

Periods of uncertainty can therefore make trust more commercially important, not less. Brands still need to sell, but how they sell matters.

Staying Visible Can Create an Opportunity

There is another reason brands may want to avoid disappearing completely when conditions become difficult. If competitors reduce their advertising at the same time, the available share of voice can change.

Thakur points to previous crises as evidence that brands which continued connecting with audiences were often better positioned when conditions improved. Maintaining communication during difficult periods can help preserve familiarity and trust while competitors become less visible.

This should not be interpreted as a reason to spend without discipline. It is instead a reason to treat marketing investment carefully rather than viewing it as a cost that can be switched off without consequence. The appropriate level of investment may change, but the need to remain relevant to customers does not disappear.

Some Changes May Continue After the Crisis

As the immediate pressure begins to stabilise, marketers also need to consider which changes could last. Chavez expects continued digital adoption and greater interest in products that help consumers manage energy costs. Cars and household appliances with more energy-efficient technologies, for example, may become more attractive as people pay closer attention to operating expenses.

Connected TV may also benefit from behaviours that were already developing before the current crisis and were reinforced by periods of spending more time at home. These shifts create opportunities for businesses whose products address newly important customer concerns.

The challenge is separating temporary reactions from more durable changes. A short-term reduction in mobility may eventually reverse, while greater use of ecommerce, digital payments, connected devices, or energy-efficient products may continue because consumers have discovered a better way of doing something.

There Is No Universal Crisis Playbook

One of the recurring ideas throughout the discussion is that marketers do not have a perfect playbook for every crisis. The circumstances differ, consumer reactions vary, and the available media environment continues to change.

COVID-19 therefore provides a useful reference point rather than a set of instructions for the energy crisis. Marketers can learn from how trust, media consumption, mobility, and digital adoption changed during the pandemic, but those lessons still need to be tested against what consumers are doing today.

The more dependable approach is to combine previous experience with current information. Data can show how behaviour is changing, while marketers and their partners still need to decide what those changes mean for the brand.

What Marketers Can Do Next Monday

The guests close the discussion with recommendations marketers can put into practice immediately. Chavez advises businesses to speak with their brand and media strategists and review the latest available information rather than trying to navigate the disruption alone. Agencies, research partners, and media suppliers may already have data that can help businesses understand how audiences are changing.

Thakur recommends reopening the existing media plan and comparing its assumptions with current consumer behaviour. Instead of immediately rebuilding everything, marketers can identify a portion of the budget that no longer reflects where customers are today and determine whether it should be reallocated. The objective is to make the plan more honest about current behaviour rather than continue operating as though nothing has changed.

Davadilla makes the same point from an out-of-home perspective. Marketers should review whether locations and routes are still supported by current mobility data and consider whether available technologies can improve the timing, placement, and relevance of their communication. Across all three recommendations, the principle is consistent: review the plan against today’s customer rather than yesterday’s assumptions.

The Takeaway

The energy crisis provides another reminder that consumer behaviour does not remain fixed when circumstances change. People reconsider spending, adjust how often and where they travel, spend more time at home, adopt different technologies, and become more deliberate about what they buy. For marketers, the appropriate response is not to assume demand has disappeared, but to understand how customers have adjusted and whether the existing marketing plan still reflects that reality.

Previous crises provide useful reference points, but they cannot replace current information. Media consumption, mobility patterns, ecommerce activity, connected TV adoption, and household decision-making all provide signals that can help marketers decide where to invest and what needs to change. Data can inform those decisions, but judgment is still needed to determine what the information means for the brand and how quickly the plan should respond.

The fundamentals remain fairly steady even when the environment does not. Brands still need to remain visible, explain why their products deserve consideration, communicate with the right people, and avoid exploiting customer anxiety. The channels and behaviours may change, but the responsibility remains the same: understand where customers are today, communicate something relevant to their circumstances, and continue adjusting as their behaviour changes.