Forced Fun Fatigue

I’ve been talking with my clients this month about virtual socialising. Back in the long since forgotten pre-COVID days, we were regularly with our clients, going for drinks, having lunch or dinner together as part of the rhythm of getting to know them and being part of their business. Now everything has stopped as we work from home both for now and the foreseeable future. The challenge is real when it comes to how we continue to strengthen our social connection to our customers whilst not being able to spend time with them in person.

I decided to conduct my own research with my clients and can report that activities undertaken in the last seven months to socialise at a distance include virtual drinks parties, silly hat meetings, ‘bring your worst holiday souvenir’ team meeting, a séance, cooking classes, a court jester, a mime artist, virtual coffees (sent to their clients), amongst others. I thoroughly enjoyed the research and both giggled at and admired the creativity for these ideas in equal measure.

However, the novelty appears now worn to have off and many clients reported real difficulty in maintaining momentum around these sorts of activities, and are genuinely worried about the quality of their relationships with their clients if they can’t socialise with them. So…..it got me thinking…..

Just listening to the list of things we’re doing to try to have fun with our customers sounded exhausting……and as we in England move into a second national lockdown, I wonder: is it me, or are we all starting to experience what I call ‘forced fun fatigue’? Now to be clear, personally, I miss all the activities that made life joyful: seeing friends, long and leisurely lunches, holidays, restaurants, live sport, theatre, galleries, drinks parties amongst many, many other glorious activities. But is it now the case that we need to revise what we’re trying to do as part of connecting with our customers in our professional lives?

I think so. The novelty has worn off when it comes to fun at a distance. What was originally quite exciting to do a drinks party on Zoom….most people would run screaming in the opposite direction from yet another remote meeting. We’re trying to handle resurgence of Covid-19 once again, the nights drawing in and there’s an exhausting weariness combined with a daily ‘what fresh hell is this?’ when we tune into any news programme or podcast.

So why not focus less on the forced fun element, and much more on the how we can bring disruptive insights, critical thinking, useful connections to our customers? Yes, we’ll need to work harder – but in a different way - to utilise our creativity and resourcefulness to get a share of headspace from our clients and strengthen our relationship with them in an entirely different, memorable and more long lasting way.